Wish You Were Here

25

Mondays made Harry feel as if she were shoveling a ton of paper with a toothpick. Susan’s junk mail piled up like the Matterhorn. Harry couldn’t fit it in her mailbox. Josiah received Country Life magazine from England and a letter from an antiques dealer in France. Fair’s box was jammed with advertisements from drug companies: End Heartworms Now! Mrs. Hogendobber would be happy to receive her Christian mail-order catalogue. Jesus mugs were a hot item, or you could buy a T-shirt printed with the Sermon on the Mount.

Harry envied Christ. He was born before the credit card. Owning a credit card in the age of the mail-order catalogue was a dicey business. Bankruptcy, a phone call away, could be yours in less than two minutes.

Cranky, she upended the last duffel bag, and letters, postcards, and bills poured out like white confetti. Mrs. Murphy crouched, wiggled her behind, then pounced into the delicious pile.

“No claws. Citizens will know you’re fooling with their mail and that’s a federal offense.” Harry scratched the base of her tail.

Tucker watched from her bed under the counter while Mrs. Murphy darted to the end of the room, rose up on her hind legs, pulled a 180, and charged back into the pile.

“Gangbusters!”

Tucker twitched her ears. “You love paper. I don’t know why. Bores me.”

“The crinkle sounds wonderful.” Mrs. Murphy rolled in the letters. “And the texture of the different papers tickles my pads.”

“If you say so.” Tucker sounded unconvinced.

By now Mrs. Murphy was skidding on the mail, much like kids skidding on ice without skates.

“That’s enough now. You’re going to tear something.” Harry reached for the cat but she eluded her. Harry noticed a postcard on top of the latest pile Mrs. Murphy had assaulted. A pretty etching of a beetle was printed on the postcard. Harry picked it up and turned it over.

Written in computer script and addressed to her, it read: “Don’t bug me.”

Harry dropped the postcard as if it were on fire. Her heart raced.

“What’s the matter with Harry?” Tucker called to Mrs. Murphy, still sliding on the letters.

The cat stopped. “She’s white as a sheet.”

Harry sorted the mail slowly, as if in a trance, but her mind was moving so quickly she was nearly paralyzed by the speed. The killer had to be someone at Josiah’s house, telling her to mind her own business. Her amateur sleuthing had struck a nerve. What the killer didn’t know was that Harry knew the postcards were his or her signal. Nor did the killer realize that both Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber knew more about Maude than they were letting on. Harry sat down, put her head between her hands, and breathed deeply. If she put her head between her knees she’d pass out. Her hands would have to do. Her thoughts going back to Mrs. Hogendobber, Harry realized she would have to impress upon her the absolute necessity of not telling anyone about the second ledger. Even if Mrs. Hogendobber had a guardian angel, there was no point in testing him.

If flitted through her mind that Fair could have sent the bug postcard. This was his idea of sick humor. Really sick. The card might not have come from the killer. She clung to this hope for an instant. Fair had his faults but he wasn’t this weird. Like a dying light bulb, her hope fizzled out. She knew.

Harry dialed Rick Shaw and gave him her latest report. He said he’d be right over. Then she finished sorting the mail, the one bright spot being another postcard from Lindsay Astrove, still in Europe.

Mrs. Hogendobber appeared on the doorstep. Tucker ran to the door and wagged her tail. Ever since Mrs. H. had released them from Maude’s shop, Tucker harbored warm feelings for her.

Harry opened the door, reached for Mrs. Hogendobber, and yanked her into the post office. She shut the door behind her.

“Harry, I am capable of self-propulsion. You must have heard about my near-death experience on Mim’s boat. I thank the Lord for my deliverance.”

“No, I haven’t heard a peep. I do want to hear about it but not right this instant. I want to remind you, to beseech you, not to tell anyone about those accounting books. You’ll be in danger if you do.”

“I know that,” Mrs. Hogendobber replied. “And I know more than that, too. I’ve studied those books to the last penny, the last decimal point. That woman ordered enough packing to move everyone in Crozet. It makes no sense, and the money she was getting! Our Maude would never have been on food stamps.”

“How much money?”

“She’d been here for five years—a rough average of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year on the left side of the ledger, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s a lot of plastic peanuts.” Fear ebbed from Harry as her curiosity took over.

“I haven’t a clue.” Mrs. Hogendobber threw up her hands.

“I do—sort of.” Harry peered out of the front window to make sure no one was coming in. “We have as our first victim a rich man who owned a concrete plant and heavy, heavy hauling trucks. The second victim was a woman who operated a packing shop. They were shipping something.”

“Dope. Maude could fix up anything. She could pack a diamond or a boa constrictor. Remember the time she helped Donna Eicher ship ant farms?”

“That!” Harry recalled three years back, when Donna Eicher started her ant farms. Watching the insects create empires between two Plexiglas plates held an appeal for some people. It lost its appeal for Donna when her inventory escaped and devoured the contents of her pantry.

“If Maude could ship ants, she sure could ship cocaine.”

“They’ve got dogs now that smell packages. I read it in the newspaper.” Harry thought out loud. “She’d have to get it past them.”

“We can smell anything. My nose detects a symphony of fragrance,” Tucker yapped.

“Oh, Tucker, can it. You’ve got a good nose. Let’s not get carried away with it.” Mrs. Murphy wanted to hear what the women were saying.

“Piffle.” Mrs. Hogendobber waved her hand. “She’d wrap the drugs with some odor to throw them off—Vicks VapoRub would do the job. A hundred fifty thousand a year, well, where else would one make profits like that?” Her back was to the door, which had just opened.

Harry winked at Mrs. Hogendobber, who stopped talking. Harry smiled. “Hi, Courtney. How’s your summer going?”

“Fine, Mrs. Haristeen. Good morning, Mrs. Hogendobber.” Courtney was down at the mouth but polite.

“How bad is it?” Harry asked.

“Danny Tucker is under house arrest for the rest of the summer. He even has a curfew! I can’t believe Mr. and Mrs. Tucker are that cruel.”

“Did he tell you why?” Harry inquired.

“No.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Tucker aren’t that cruel, so whatever he did, it was a doozy,” Harry said.

“Doozy is such a funny word.” Courtney wrinkled the mail by twisting it in her hands. She wasn’t paying attention to it.

“Comes from Dusenberg,” Mrs. Hogendobber boomed. “The Dusenberg was a beautiful, expensive car in the 1920’s but to own one you also needed a mechanic. It broke down constantly. So a doozy is something spectacular and bad.”

“Oh.” Courtney was interested. “Did you own one?”

“That was a little before my time, but I saw a Dusenberg once and my father, who loved cars, told me about them.”

Courtney thought the 1920’s were as distant as the eleventh century. Age was something she didn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure if she’d just insulted Mrs. Hogendobber. She did know that her question would have insulted Mrs. Sanburne. Courtney left under this cloud of confusion.

“She’s a dear child.” Mrs. Hogendobber swung her purse to and fro. “No one ever forgets anything in this town. I know I never do.”

“Yes?” Harry waited for the connective sentence.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Hogendobber said. “Just crossed my mind. Now listen, Harry, I was due at the Ruth Circle five minutes ago but I’ll be in constant touch and I want you to do the same.”

“Agreed.”

Mrs. Hogendobber rushed out for her women’s church group meeting and Harry waited for the troops to march through, eagerly opening their mailboxes for a love letter and groaning when they found a bill instead. She waited for Rick Shaw too. She didn’t know if he was a good sheriff or not. Too soon to tell, but she felt safer for having him around.

26

Fair Haristeen was washing his hands after performing surgery on an unborn ten-month-old fetus. Given the foal’s bloodlines, he was worth a hundred thousand before he dropped. Fetal surgery was a new technique and Fair, a gifted surgeon, was in demand by thoroughbred breeders in Virginia. His skill and the deference paid to him didn’t go to his head. Fair still made the rounds to humble barns. He loved his work and when he allowed himself time to think about himself he knew it was his work that kept him alive.

Opening the door from the operating room, he found BoomBoom Craycroft sitting in his office. She smiled.

“Horse trouble?”

“No. Just . . . trouble. I came to apologize for the way I treated you the day Kelly was killed. I took it out on you in my own bitchy way—you must be used to that by now.”

Fair, unprepared for an apology, cleared his throat. “S’okay.”

“It’s not okay and I’m not okay and the whole town is crazy.” Her voice cracked. “I’ve done some serious thinking. It’s about time, you’ll say. No, you wouldn’t say anything. You’re too much the gentleman, except for once in a blue moon when you lose your temper. But I have thought about myself and Kelly. He never grew up, you see. He was always the smart kid who puts one over on people, and I never grew up either. We didn’t have to. Rich people don’t.”

“Some rich people do.”

“Name three.” BoomBoom’s black eyes flashed.

“Stafford Sanburne, in our generation.”

She smiled. “One. Well, I guess you’re right. Maybe you have to suffer to grow up and usually we can pay someone to suffer for us. That didn’t work this time. I can’t run away from this one.” She tilted her head back, exposing her graceful neck. “I also came to apologize for not understanding how important your work is to you. I don’t think I will ever see how reaching into a horse’s intestinal tract is wonderful, but—it’s wonderful to you. Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m apologized out. That’s what I came to say, and I’ll go.”

“Don’t go.” Fair felt like a beggar and he hated that feeling. “Give me a chance to say something. You weren’t a spoiled rich brat each and every day and I wasn’t a saint myself. We were kids when we married our spouses. Harry’s a decent person. Kelly was a decent person. But what did we know in our early twenties? I thought love was sex and laughs. One big party. Hell, BoomBoom, I had no more idea of what I needed in a woman than . . . uh, nuclear fusion.”

“Fission.”

“Fission’s when they pop apart. Fusion’s when they come together,” Fair corrected her.

“I corrected you. That’s a rude habit.”

“BoomBoom, I can accept that you’re thinking about your life but do you have to be so overpoweringly polite?”

“No.”

“Anyway, I made mistakes, too, and I made them on Harry. I wonder if everyone learns by hurting other people.”

“Isn’t it odd? I feel that I know Kelly better now than when he was alive. I guess in some ways you feel you know Harry better now that you have some distance. You know, this is the first time we’ve had a heart-to-heart talk. God, is it like this for everyone? Does it take a crisis to get to the truth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do we have to savage our marriages, give up the sex, before becoming friends? Why can’t people be friends and lovers? I mean, are they mutually exclusive?”

“I don’t know. What I know”—Fair lowered his eyes—“is that when we’re together I feel something I’ve never felt before.”

“Do you still love Harry?” BoomBoom held her breath.

“Not romantically. Right now I’m so mad at her I can’t imagine being friends with her but people tell me that passes.”

“She loves you.”

“No, she doesn’t. In her heart of hearts she knows. I hate lying to her. I know all the reasons why but when she finds out she’ll hate me most for the lying.”

BoomBoom sat quietly for a moment. Being female, there were many things she could say to Fair about his feelings for Harry but she’d taken enough of a risk by coming here to apologize. She wasn’t going to take any more, not until she felt stronger, anyway. “I’m running the business, you know.” She changed the subject.

“No, I didn’t know. It will be good for you and good for the business.”

“Isn’t it a joke, Fair? I’m thirty-three years old and I’ve never had to report to work or be responsible to anyone or anything. I’m . . . I’m excited. I’m sorry it took this horror to wake me up. I wish I could have done something, made something out of myself while Kelly was alive but . . . I’m going to do it now.”

“I’m happy for you.”

She paused for a moment, and tears came to her eyes. “Fair”—she could barely speak—“I need you.”

27

A swift afternoon thunderstorm darkened and drenched Crozet. It was a summer of storms. Harry couldn’t see out to the railroad tracks during the downpour. Tucker cowered in her bed and Mrs. Murphy, herself not fond of thunder, stuck to Harry like a furry burr.

She heard a sizzle and a pop. The power had shut down, a not uncommon occurrence.

The sky was blackish green. It gave Harry the creeps. She felt under the counter for her ready supply of candles, found them, and lit a few. Then she stood by the front window and watched the deluge driven by stiff winds. Mrs. Murphy jumped onto her shoulder, so Harry reached up and brought the cat into her arms. She cuddled her like a baby, rocking her, and thought about Rick Shaw’s response to the postcard—which was “Lay low.”

Easier said than done. The death of two citizens must be accounted for somehow. And she felt that she had the end of a ragged thread. If she could follow that thread back, step by step, she would find the answer. She also knew she might find more than she bargained for—an answer in this case didn’t mean satisfying her curiosity. Secrets are often ugly. She was peeling away the layers of the town. It might mean her own life. Rick forcefully impressed this upon her. She had been of help to him and he was grateful but she wasn’t a professional so she should butt out. She wondered, too, if underneath his concern there might not be a hint of face-saving. The Sheriff’s Department seemed to be running in circles. Better the citizens didn’t know. She wondered, if Rick did solve the murders, whether he would get a gold star behind his name or at least a promotion. Maybe he didn’t want to share the limelight.

Well, whatever, he was doing his job, and part of that job was protecting the citizens of Albemarle County and that meant her too.

A figure appeared in the swirling rain, oilskin flapping in the wind. It headed toward the post office. The hair on Harry’s neck stood up. Mrs. Murphy sensed it, jumped down, and arched her back.

The door flew open and a bedraggled Bob Berryman swept in, leaves in his wake. He leaned against the door with his body close to it.

“Goddamn!” he roared. “Even nature’s turned against us.” He seemed unhinged.

Paralyzed by fear, Harry edged back by the counter. Bob followed her, dripping as he went. In this weather, if Harry screamed at the top of her lungs no one would hear her.

Tucker scurried out from under the counter. “She’s scared of Bob Berryman?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Murphy never took her eyes from Bob’s glowering face.

“What can I do for you?” Harry squeaked.

Bob reached across the counter, pointing. “Gimme one of those registered slips. Harry, are you sick? You look . . . funny.”

“Tucker, can you get out the door if I open it?” Mrs. Murphy asked. “He stole those letters. If he’s the one and he makes a move for Harry, we can attack.”

“Yeah.” Tucker hurried to the door that separated the work area from the reception area.

Mrs. Murphy stretched her full length and began playing with the doorknob. This one was the right height for her. If she opened the door Harry would be on to one of her best tricks but Mrs. Murphy didn’t think she had a choice. She strained and held the knob between her two paws. With a quick motion she forced the knob to the left and the door popped open.

“Smart cat,” Berryman commented.

“So that’s how she does it,” Harry said weakly.

Tucker sauntered out, nonchalant, and sat three paces from Bob’s juicy ankle. Mrs. Murphy leaped back up to the counter to watch and wait.

“The slip, Harry.” Berryman’s voice filled the room.

Harry pulled out a registered mail slip and filled it out as candlelight flickered and a sheet of rain lashed at the front window. She tore up the first copy and started another.

“I’ll get it right,” she mumbled.

Berryman reached across and held her hand. She froze. Tucker moved forward and Mrs. Murphy crept to the edge of the counter. Berryman observed the cat and looked down at the dog. Tucker’s fangs were bared.

“Call off your dog.”

“Let go of my hand first.” Harry steadied herself.

He released her hand. Tucker sat down but continued to stare at Berryman.

“Don’t be afraid of me. I didn’t kill Maude. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“Uh—”

“I didn’t. I know it looks bad but I couldn’t take any more at her funeral. Josiah’s words of wisdom,” he said bitterly, “were the straw that broke the camel’s back. What does he know about men and women?!”

Harry, confused, said, “I expect he knows a great deal.”

“You must be kidding. He uses Mim Sanburne to party in Palm Beach and Saratoga and New York and God knows where else.”

“I didn’t mean that. He’s observant, and because he isn’t married or involved he has more time than other people. I guess he—”

“You like him. All women like him. I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Maude adored him. Said he made her laugh so hard her sides ached. He yapped about clothes and makeup and decorating. They always had their heads together. I used to tell her he was nothing but a high-class salesman but she told me to stop acting like Joe Six-Pack—she wasn’t going to give him up. She said he gave her what I couldn’t and I gave her what he couldn’t.” Bob’s lips compressed. “I hate that silly faggot.”

“Don’t call him a faggot,” Harry admonished. “I don’t care who he sleeps with or who he doesn’t. You’re mad at him because he was close to Maude. He made you jealous.”

“So the cat’s out of the bag.” He sighed. “I don’t care anymore. You want to know why I hit him? Really? He came over and told me to pull myself together. ‘Think of your wife,’ he said. I was afraid that Maude had told him about us, and then I knew she had. Damn him! Coming over and oozing concern. He didn’t want Linda to go into a huff and ruin his orchestrated funeral. He didn’t care about Maude.”

“Of course he did. He paid for much of it.”

“We all paid for the funeral. He wants to look good so he can take over her store. He and Maude talked business as much as they talked mascara. He knows what a moneymaker it is. I—well, I don’t care about the business. Okay, it’s out in the open. I loved Maude. She’s dead and I’d give anything to have her back.” He paused. “I’m leaving Linda. She can have the house, the car, everything. I’m keeping my business. I’m alone but at least I’m not living a lie.” This admission calmed him. “I didn’t kill Maude. I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head.”

“I’m so sorry, Bob.”

“So am I.” He handed over the envelope to be sent to the IRS. “Rain slacked off.” Realizing what he’d said, he was embarrassed. He hesitated a minute before leaving.

Harry understood. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“You can tell anyone you like. I apologize for fulminating. I’m not sorry for what I told you. I’m sorry for how I told you. You don’t need to put up with that. I’m so up and down. I—I don’t know myself. I mean, I go up and down.” This was the only way he could describe his mood swings.

“Under the circumstances, I think that’s natural.”

“I don’t know. I feel crazy sometimes.”

“It will even out. Be easier on yourself.”

He smiled a tight smile, said, “Yeah,” and then left.

Harry, exhausted from the encounter, sat with a thud. Tucker walked back to her.

“So the letters were love letters,” Mrs. Murphy thought out loud.

“Probably, but we don’t know,” Tucker replied. “Anyway, he could have killed her in a lovers’ quarrel. Humans do that. I overheard on the TV that four hundred and thirty-five Americans are killed each day. I think that’s what the newscaster said. They’ll kill over anything.”

“I know, but I don’t think he killed her. I think he told Harry the truth.”

“What are you meowing about, kitty cat? Now I’m on to your tricks. You’ve been opening doors all along, haven’t you? You little sneak.” Harry stroked Tucker’s ears while Mrs. Murphy rubbed against her legs. Vitality seeped back into her limbs, which felt so heavy with fear when Bob first came into the post office. She hoped the rest of the day would pick up. But unfortunately, Harry’s day went from bad to worse.

Mrs. Hogendobber drove up in her Falcon. She opened an umbrella against the rain. Mrs. H. saw no reason to trade in a useful automobile, and the interest rates on car loans were usury as far as she was concerned. Although once a month she drove over to Brady-Bushey Ford to allow Art Bushey the opportunity to sell her a new car, Art knew she had no intention of buying anything. She swooned over him, and being gallant, he took her to lunch each time she careened onto the lot.

“Harry! I made a mistake, a tiny mistake, but I thought you ought to know. I should have told you before now but I didn’t think about it. I just . . . didn’t. After you left the party or whatever you want to call it at Josiah’s, I stayed on. Mim and I were commenting on the state of today’s morals. Then Mim mentioned that you had encouraged Little Marilyn to contact Stafford in New York. I spoke about forgiveness and she haughtily told me she didn’t need a sermon, she attended Saint Paul’s for that, and I said that forgiveness extended through the other six days of the week as well.”

“I’m sorry you got on the bad side of her.” Harry leaned on the counter.

“No, no, that’s not it. You see, then Josiah mentioned that the government, the federal government, has never forgiven the draft evaders, not really, and Ned, who arrived after you left—quite drawn-looking, too, I must say—well, Ned laughed and said the IRS never forgives anyone. The power to tax is the power to destroy, and I said maybe it was just as well that Maude was dead because they’d catch up with her sooner or later.”

“Oh, no!” Harry exclaimed.

“Conversation ran to other topics and I didn’t think about it until now.”

“Why now?”

“I don’t know exactly. The rain made me remember all that water in Mim’s boat. What if—what if Mim wasn’t the killer’s target? After all, Mim can swim.”

“I see.” Harry rubbed her temples. This felt worse than a headache.

The entire town knew about Mim’s slashed pontoon because the workers Jim used to lift the boat onto his truck saw the damage. By now everyone was jumping to conclusions, so the gossip all over town was that Mim was the intended victim.

Mrs. Hogendobber breathed in sharply. “What do I do now?”

“If anyone brings up your slip—you know, asks a leading question about Maude and the IRS—pick up the phone and call me. Better yet, call Rick Shaw.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Mrs. H., you must trust me. The killer gives a signal before he strikes—I can’t tell you what it is. He gives warning, which makes me wonder if the slashed pontoon was really aimed at you.”

“Do you think he’ll kill me? Is that what you’re saying?” Her voice was quite calm.

“I hope not.”

“If I tell Rick Shaw he’ll know what we’ve done.”

“I think we’d better tell him. What’s he going to do? Arrest us? Listen to me. You have absolutely got to remember who was there after I left.”

“Myself, Mim, Little Marilyn, Jim, old Dr. Johnson, and Ned. That reminds me, what is going on with Ned and Susan? Oh, Susan was there, of course.”

“Just remember the names and I’ll tell you about Ned.”

This encouraged her. “U-m-m, Fair and Josiah—well, that’s obvious.”

“No, nothing is obvious. Are you certain there wasn’t anyone else? What about Market? What about any of the kids?”

“No, Market wasn’t there, nor Courtney.”

“This isn’t good.”

Mrs. Hogendobber put her back to the wall for support. She wiped her brow. “I’m not used to not trusting people. I feel horrible.”

Harry’s voice softened. “None of us is used to that. You can’t be expected to change a behavior overnight—and maybe it’s better that you don’t. Except until we catch this killer, well, we’re going to have to be on our toes. Why don’t you have Larry’s wife stay with you tonight, or better yet, go over there.”

“Do you think it’s that bad?”

“No,” Harry lied. “But why take chances?”

“You believe that Maude and Kelly were shipping out dope, don’t you? I do. They had to be in business together. So who’s the kingpin?”

“Some sweet Crozet person we play tennis with or go to church with. A woman or a man we’ve known for years.”

“Why?” Mrs. Hogendobber might preach about evil, but when confronted with it she was at a loss. She expected the Devil with green horns or a human being with a snarling face. It had never once occurred to her in her long and relatively happy life that evil is ordinary.

Harry shrugged in answer to Mrs. Hogendobber’s question. “Love or money.”

After Mrs. Hogendobber drove off, Harry returned to work with renewed vigor. Since she felt helpless about Mrs. Hogendobber, she could feel purposeful in cleaning the office. She could get one thing to work right in her life.

Then Fair walked into the post office.

“I tried to be a good husband—you know that, don’t you?” Fair cleared his throat.

“Yes.” Harry held her breath.

“We never discussed what we expected from each other. Perhaps we should have.”

“What’s wrong? Come out and say it. Just come out with it, for chrissake.” Harry reached out to touch him and stopped herself.

Fair stammered, “Nothing’s wrong. We made our mistakes. I just wanted to say that.”

He left. He wanted to tell her about BoomBoom. The truth. He tried. He couldn’t.

Harry wondered, Was he mixed up in these murders? He was acting so strange. It couldn’t be. No way.

28

Mrs. Hogendobber’s fears were justified. Rick Shaw seethed when Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber confessed about Xeroxing the second ledger.

By the time Harry got home she decided if this wasn’t the worst day in her life, it certainly qualified as so bad she didn’t want it repeated.

She called Susan, telling her about Fair’s peculiar behavior. Susan declared that Fair was in the grief stage of the divorce. Harry asked her to come to the post office in the morning for a long coffee break. After she hung up she decided she’d tell Susan about the bug postcard she had received. She needed Susan’s response. Anyway, if she couldn’t trust her best friend, life wasn’t worth living.

29

Tucker chewed a big knucklebone behind the meat counter. Market Shiflett, in a generous mood, gave her a fresh one. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter received smaller beef bones. They happily gnawed away while catching up on recent events. Ozzie, Bob Berryman’s Australian shepherd, had been down at the mouth. Pewter claimed he hardly wagged his tail and barked. Mim Sanburne’s snotty Afghan hound had lost his testicles yesterday. The animal news, usually rich in the summer, lagged behind the human news this year.

Tucker recounted Rick Shaw’s livid explosion. Poor Mrs. Hogendobber thought she was going to jail.

Courtney paid scant attention to these three animals cracking bones and talking among themselves. Her large hoop earrings clattered.

“When did Courtney start dressing like a gypsy?” Mrs. Murphy, conservative about attire, wanted to know.

“She’s trying to attract Danny Tucker’s attention. He’ll be mowing Maude Bly Modena’s lawn today. He’ll hear her before he sees her.” Pewter had eaten so much she lay down on one side and rested her head on her outstretched arm.

“Guess you heard what he did?”

“Mrs. Murphy told me yesterday while you were out doing potty, as Harry calls it.” Pewter laughed. “I don’t mind Harry’s expressions so much except when she tells you to go potty her voice rises half an octave. Say, not only is Courtney sticking big hoops in her ears but last night when Market was out she made herself a martini. She wants to be sophisticated and she thought drinking a martini would do it. Ha! Tastes like lighter fluid.”

“She’s young.” Mrs. Murphy tore off a slender thread of red meat.

“Tell me about it. Human beings take forty years to grow up and half of them don’t do it then. We’re ready for the world at six months.”

“We’re not really grown up though, Pewter.” Mrs. Murphy licked her chops. “I’d say we’re fully adult at one year. I wonder, why does it take them so long?”

“Retarded,” came Pewter’s swift reply. “I mean, will you look at Courtney Shiflett. If she were a child of mine those earrings would be out of those ears so fast she wouldn’t know what hit her.”

“At least she works. Think of all those humans who don’t even earn a living until their middle twenties. She works after school and she works in the summer. She’s a good kid.” Mrs. Murphy thought most humans lazy, the young ones especially.

“If you like her so much, you live with her. If I hear her George Michael tape one more time, I’m going to shred it with these very claws.” She flashed her impressive talons. “Furthermore, the girl will make herself deaf—and me, too—if she doesn’t turn down that boom box. Sometimes I think I’ll walk out the door and never come back—live on field mice.”

“You’re too fat to catch mice,” Mrs. Murphy taunted her.

“I’ll have you know that I caught one last week. I gave it to Market and he went ‘O-o-o.’ He could have thanked me.”

“They don’t like mice.” Tucker slurped at her bone.

“Try giving them a bird.” Mrs. Murphy rolled her eyes. “The worst. Harry hollers and then buries the bird. She likes the moles and mice I bring her. I break their necks clean. No blood, no fuss. A neat job, if I do say so myself.”

Pewter burped. “Excuse me. A neat job . . . Mrs. Murphy, the human murders were messy,” she thought out loud.

“Why?” Tucker sat up but put her paw on her bone just in case. Pewter was known to steal food. “It’s not efficient to kill a person that way. Throw one in a cement mixer and tie another one to the railroad track. Originally, it was a neat job. After they were dead the killer ground them into hamburger.”

Pewter lifted her head. “The killer’s not a vegetarian.” Then she dropped her head back and laughed.

Mrs. Murphy pushed Pewter with her paw. “Very funny.”

“I thought so.”

Tucker said, “The police aren’t revealing how Kelly and Maude died—if they know. The mess has to be to cover up something inside the bodies or to divert us from what the people were doing before they died.”

“That’s right, Tucker.” Mrs. Murphy got excited. “What were they doing in the middle of the night? Kelly was at the concrete plant. Working? Maybe. And Maude willingly went out to the railroad tracks west of town. Humans sleep at night. If they were awake it had to be important, or”—she paused—“it had to be something they were used to doing.”

30

“Mrs. Murphy and Tucker are at the back door.” Susan interrupted Harry, who was sorting the mail and telling all simultaneously.

“Will you let them in?”

Susan opened the back door and the two friends raced through, meowing and barking. “They’re glad to see you.”

“And in a good mood too. Market handed out bones today.”

“We think we’ve got part of the puzzle,” Mrs. Murphy announced.

“They were in cahoots, Kelly and Maude, with something—” Tucker shouted.

“In the nighttime when no one could see,” Mrs. Murphy interrupted.

“All right, girls, calm down.” Harry smiled and petted them.

Mrs. Murphy, discouraged, hopped into the mail bin. “I give up! She’s so dense.”

Tucker replied, “Find another way to tell her.”

Mrs. Murphy stuck her head over the bin. “Let’s go outside.” She jumped out.

Tucker and the cat dashed to the back door. Tucker barked and whined a little.

“Don’t tell me you have to go to the bathroom. You just came in,” Harry chided.

Tucker barked some more. “What are we going to do when we get out?”

“I don’t know, yet.”

Harry, exasperated, opened the door and Tucker nearly knocked her over.

“Corgis are a lot faster than you think,” Susan observed.

After replaying yesterday’s conversation with Fair one more time, both Susan and Harry were depressed. Harry shook out the last mailbag, three-quarters full. Susan made a beeline for the postcards. They both held their breath. A series of Italian postcards scared them but there were no graveyards on the front, and when turned over they revealed a number in the right-hand corner and the signature of their traveling friend, Lindsay Astrove. They exhaled simultaneously.

“I’ll read you Lindsay’s cards while you finish stuffing the mailboxes.” Susan sat on a stool, crossed her legs, put the postcards in order, and began.

“‘Being abroad is not what it’s cracked up to be. I took a train across the Alps and when it pulled into Venice my heart stopped. It was beautiful. From there, everything went downhill.

“‘The Venetians are about as rude as anyone could imagine. They live to take the tourists for all they can. No one smiles, not even at each other. However, I was determined to transcend these mortal coils, so to speak, and drink in the beauty of the place. Blistered and exhausted, I tramped from place to place, seeing the Lord in painting after painting. I saw Jesus on the cross, off the cross, in a robe, in a loincloth, with nails, without nails, bleeding, not bleeding, hair up, hair down. You name it. I saw it. Along with the paintings were various other art forms of the Lord and his closest friends and family.

“‘Naturally, there were many, many, many pieces of the Virgin Mother. (A slight contradiction in terms.) In all of Venice, however, I was not able to find a snapshot of Joseph and the donkey. I could only conclude that they are ashamed of his stupidity for believing Mary’s story about her and God and the conception thing and they only bring him out for Christmas.

“‘I did arrive at one possible conclusion. Since all of this artwork looks exactly alike, maybe one man is to blame. I find it plausible that one man did all of it and used many names. Or maybe all the little Italian boys born between 1300 and 1799, if their last name ended in “i” or “o,” were given a paint-by-number kit. I am sure there is a logical explanation for all this.

“‘One closing thought and I will move on to my visit to Rome. I am grateful that Jesus was Italian and not Spanish. All of that art would have been Day-Glo on velvet instead of oil on canvas.

“‘On to Rome—the Infernal City.

“‘Rome combines the worst of New York and Los Angeles. The one thing the Romans do well is blow their horns. The noisiest city in the world. The Romans rival the Venetians for rudeness. The food in both cities is not nearly as good as the worst Italian restaurant in San Francisco.

“‘As you can probably guess, I got to go to the Vatican Museums. I also got to leave the Vatican Museums because I proclaimed in an audible voice that it is just disgusting to see the wealth the church is hoarding. On the interest alone, they could cure cancer, AIDS, hunger, and homelessness in less than a year. All of a sudden the people who did not speak English were fluent in the language. I was ushered out. I didn’t even get to see the Pope in his satin dresses.

“‘The rest of Rome was no big deal either. The Colosseum was in shambles, the Spanish steps were littered with addicts and drunks, and the Trevi fountain was like any cruise bar.

“‘The designer shops were a delight. A designer outfit is one that does not fit, does not match, and does not cost less than your permanent residence. Did not shop in that city.

“‘I left Rome wondering why the Visigoths bothered to conquer it. However, Monaco was fabulous. The people, the food, the attitude, the absence of Renaissance culture!

“‘I’ll see you all in September when I will have soaked up about as much of the Old World as I can possibly stand. I’m beginning to think that Mim, Little Marilyn, Josiah, and company are gilded sheep to rave on about Europe, furniture, and a face-lift in Switzerland. Oh, well, as you know, I think Mim impersonates the human condition. And don’t show this to Mrs. Hogendobber! Do show Susan.

“‘Love, Lindsay’ ”

Susan and Harry laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks. Once they finally got hold of themselves they realized they hadn’t laughed, true laughter, since Kelly’s murder. Stress was exacting its toll.

“How many postcards did that take?”

Susan shuffled them like playing cards. “Twenty-one.”

“Who are they addressed to?”

“You. You’re the only one she could write this to.”

Harry smiled and took the postcards. “I’ll be glad when Lindsay comes home. Maybe this will be over by September.”

“I hope so.”

“Shred it up, like this.” Mrs. Murphy ripped into the sparrow corpse, and feathers flew everywhere. A squeamish expression passed over Tucker’s pretty face. “Oh, come on, Welsh corgis are supposed to be tough as nails. Tear that mole I caught into three pieces.”

“She’s going to hate this.”

“So she hates it. Our message might sink in subliminally.”

“She’s smart for a person. She knows there’s a connection between Kelly and Maude.”

“Tucker, stop shilly-shallying. I want her to know we know. Maybe she’ll start to listen to us for a change.”

Tucker, with singular lack of enthusiasm, tore the still-warm mole into three pieces. If that wasn’t bad enough, Mrs. Murphy made her carry the hunks to the back door of the post office.

The cat reared up on her hind legs and beat on the door. A soft rattle echoed in the post office.

Harry opened the door. Neither animal budged. Instead they sat next to their kill, carefully placed together by Mrs. Murphy.

“How revolting,” Harry exclaimed.

“I told you she’d hate it,” Tucker snapped to the tiger cat.

“That’s not the point.”

“What?” Susan called out.

“The cat and dog brought back the remains of a mole and what must have been a bird only a short time ago.” Harry peered for a closer look. “Ugh. The mole’s in three pieces.”

Susan stuck her head out the back door. “Like Maude.”

“That’s horrible. How could you say that?”

“Well—it’s not hard to think of those things.” Susan petted Tucker on the head. “Anyway, they’re doing what comes naturally and they brought these pathetic corpses back to you as a present. You should be properly grateful.”

“I’ll be properly grateful after I clean them up.”

Whether or not the bird and mole corpses inspired Harry, the animals couldn’t say, but she did drive her blue truck to Kelly’s concrete plant, leaving them outside while she went in for a chat.

After delicately dancing around the subject in Kelly’s office, now taken over by his wife, Harry felt the time was right. She quietly leaned toward BoomBoom and asked, “Did Kelly ever do business with Maude?”

A wave of relief swept over the sultry woman’s features. “Oh—sure. She packed up his Christmas business mailing for him. Is that what you mean?”

“No.” Harry noticed the photos of Kelly with the county commissioners, the president of the University of Virginia, the state representatives. “What about business on a larger scale?”

“There’s no record of it.” Just to make certain, BoomBoom jangled Marie on the intercom and Marie confirmed the negative.

“What about a more intimate connection?” Harry whispered, and waited for the reaction.

Extramarital sex, shocking to many, barely dented BoomBoom’s psyche. She expected it, even from her husband. “No. Maude wasn’t Kelly’s type, although she seems to have been Bob Berryman’s.”

“All over town?” Harry asked, knowing it was.

“Linda’s given to fainting spells. Next come the faith healers, I guess. Hard to believe either Linda or Maude loved him, but then you really never know, do you?” Her long eyelashes, which reached into next week, fluttered for an instant.

“No.”

BoomBoom’s face flushed. “Kelly wasn’t a saint and our marriage was far from perfect. If he strayed off the reservation, so to speak, he’d never have done it close to home. What do you think? You obviously believe something was going on between my husband and Maude.”

“I don’t know. My hunch is they were in business together. Illegal.”

BoomBoom stiffened slightly. “He made tons of money legally.”

“Kelly loved to screw the system. An enormous untaxable profit would have been a siren call to his rebellious self—if they were shipping drugs, I mean.”

Realistic about Kelly, BoomBoom hesitated. It was not as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her once or twice since his murder. “I don’t know, but I sure hope you keep these thoughts to yourself. He’s dead. Don’t go about ruining his name.”

“I won’t, but I have to get to the bottom of this. Do you think Kelly’s murder and Maude’s murder are connected?”

“Well, at first I didn’t think, period. The shock left me empty, and into the emptiness rushed anger. I just want to kill this son of a bitch. Barehanded.” She put her hands together in a choking motion. “As the days have gone by—seems like years, in a funny way—I go over it and over it. I don’t know why but yes, I believe they are connected.”

“Shipping something—that’s what I come up with no matter how I examine this.”

“Contrary to what the public has been told by government types, drugs are easy to ship. It’s possible. God knows they’re also easy to hide. They don’t take up that much space. You could cram two million dollars’ worth of cocaine into these desk drawers.”

“Whatever they did, they fell afoul of a partner or partners.” Harry said this, realizing as the words were out of her mouth that BoomBoom could be one of those partners. She’d be committed to profit, but Harry couldn’t imagine BoomBoom at her hardest doing business with Kelly’s killer.

“If you find out, Mary Minor Haristeen, tell me twenty minutes before you tell Rick Shaw. I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars for that information.”

Harry choked. Ten thousand dollars. God, how she needed it.

A silence wrapped around them, an air of static antagonism. BoomBoom broke it: “Think it over.”

Harry swallowed. “I will.” She paused. “Why do I feel like you’re holding out on me?”

BoomBoom’s face became suddenly still. “I’m telling you everything I know about Kelly. If he had a secret, then he kept it from me too.”

“What about Fair?” Harry’s lips were white.

“I don’t know what you mean.” BoomBoom’s eyes darted around the room. “Did you come here looking for clues about Kelly or clues about Fair? I mean, you threw him out, Harry. What do you care what he does?”

“I’ll always care what he does. I just can’t live with him.” Harry’s face flushed. “He just wasn’t . . . there.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t there emotionally.” She sighed. “It’s one thing to lose your marriage, but it’s just as bad to lose your friends. Everyone’s taking sides.”

“What did you expect?” No sympathy from BoomBoom.

That put the match to the tinderbox. “More of you!” Harry clenched her teeth. “He and Kelly were never the same after Fair made that pass at you, but we stayed friends.”

“That was last year. Everyone was drunk! Look, Harry, people don’t want to look at themselves. Let me give you some advice about Crozet.”

Harry interrupted. “I’ve lived here all my life. What do you know that I don’t?”

“That divorce frightens people. From the outside your marriage seemed fine. People want to accept appearances. Now you’ve gone and upset the apple cart. You might be looking inside yourself but no one in these parts will give you credit for it. This is Albemarle County. No change. Keep everything the same. You stay the same. To change is viewed as an admission of guilt. Hell, people would rather live in their familiar misery than take a chance to change it.”

Harry had never weathered blunt truth from BoomBoom before. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. Finally she found her voice. “I can see you’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Yes. I have.”

The discussion had magnified tension instead of dispelling it.

As Harry drove home she noticed the late afternoon shadows seemed longer. A sense of menace began to haunt her.

She kept to her routine, as did everyone else. At first the routine cushioned the shock of the murders, as well as her separation, but now she felt off balance, the routine a charade. The macabre killings, the reality of them, began to sink in.

She touched down on the accelerator but she couldn’t outrun the shadows of the setting sun.

31

“‘Wish you were here.’ ” Harry’s hands shook as she read the postcard addressed to Mrs. George Hogendobber. The front of the postcard was a beautiful glossy photograph of Pushkin’s grave. Another carefully faked postmark covered the upper right-hand corner.

Harry called Rick Shaw but he wasn’t in the office. “Well, get him!” she yelled at the receptionist. Next she depressed the button and dialed Mrs. Hogendobber.

“Hello.”

Harry never thought she would be thrilled to hear that hearty voice. “Mrs. Hogendobber, are you all right?”

“You call me first thing in the morning to see if I’m all right? I’ll be over there in fifteen minutes.”

“Let me walk over for you.” Harry fought for a deep breath.

“What? Mary Minor Haristeen, I’ve been walking to the post office since before you were born.”

“Please do as I say, Mrs. H. Go out on your front porch so that everyone can see you. I’ll be there in one minute flat. Just do it, please.” She hung up the phone and flew out the door, Tucker and Mrs. Murphy at her heels.

Mrs. Hogendobber was rocking in her swing, a perplexed Mrs. Hogendobber, an irritated Mrs. Hogendobber, but an alive Mrs. Hogendobber.

Harry burst into tears at the sight of her. “Thank God!”

“What in the world is wrong with you, girl? You need an Alka-Seltzer.”

“You must get out of here. Get out of Crozet. What about your sister in Greenville, South Carolina?”

“It’s just as hot there as it is here.”

“What about your nephew in Atlanta?”

“Atlanta is worse than Greenville. I’m not going anywhere. Are you suffering from heat stroke? Maybe you’re overworked. Why don’t we go inside and pray together? You’ll soon feel the hand of the Lord on your shoulder.”

“I sincerely hope so but you’re coming with me to the post office and you aren’t leaving until Rick Shaw gets there.”

Tucker licked Mrs. Hogendobber’s ankles. Mrs. Hogendobber shooed her away, but Tucker returned. Finally, Mrs. Hogendobber let her lick. She was sweaty already on this blistering morning. What were wet ankles?

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on here?”

“Yes. Each murder victim received an unsigned postcard. The handwriting was in computer script. It looks like real handwriting but it isn’t. Anyway, on the face of each postcard was a photograph of a famous graveyard. The message read, ‘Wish you were here.’ You received one this morning.”

Mrs. Hogendobber’s hand fluttered to her ponderous bosom. “Me?”

Harry nodded. “You.”

“What did I do? I’ve never even seen a marijuana cigarette, much less sold dope.”

“Oh, Mrs. H. I don’t know if this has anything to do with drugs or not but the killer knows you’ve seen the second set of books. At Josiah’s gathering.”

Mrs. Hogendobber’s eyes narrowed. She might lack a sense of humor but she didn’t lack a quick mind. “Ah, so it isn’t just the IRS Maude was cheating. That ledger is an account of her turnover with whomever her partner was.” She placed her hands on either side of the hanging swing. “Someone at Josiah’s party. It’s preposterous!”

“Yes—but it’s real. You’re in danger.”

With great composure Mrs. Hogendobber rose and accompanied Harry back to the post office. She recovered sufficiently to say, “I always knew that you read the postcards, Harry.”

When Rick Shaw arrived with Officer Cooper, he herded everyone into the back room.

“Harry, you act normal. If you hear anyone, go on out and talk to them.” He studied the postcard.

“What about prints?” Officer Cooper asked.

“I’ll send them to the lab. But the killer’s smart. No prints. Not on the postcards. Not on the bodies. No nothing. This guy—or gal—must be invisible. We’re checking with the computer companies in town to see if there’s anything distinguishable in the script. Unfortunately, computers aren’t like typewriters, which can be traced. A letter from a typewriter is almost like a fingerprint. Electronic printing is, well, homogenized. We’re trying, but we’re not hopeful on that front.”

Officer Cooper watched Mrs. Murphy try to squeeze into a Kleenex box on the shelf.

“He’s sporting, too. He gives us a warning even if the victims don’t know it’s a warning,” Harry said.

“I hate the kind that put on finishing touches.” Rick grimaced. “Give me a good old domestic murder any day.” He swiveled his chair, facing Mrs. Hogendobber. “You’re getting out of Dodge, ma’am.”

“I’m prepared to accept what God has in store for me.” Her chin jutted out. “I was prepared to drown on Mim’s lake. This isn’t any different.”

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways, but I don’t,” Rick countered. “You can visit a relative and we’ll make certain you arrive there safe and sound. We’ll alert the authorities there to keep a close watch over your welfare and we won’t inform anyone of your whereabouts. If you won’t leave town, then we’ll put you in jail. We’ll treat you well, but, my dear Mrs. Hogendobber, you are not going to be the third victim of this cold, calculating murderer. Am I understood?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s reply was not meek.

“Fine. You and Officer Cooper go home and pack. You can decide what you want to do, and tell no one but me.”

“Not even Harry?”

“Not even Harry.”

Mrs. Hogendobber reached over and squeezed Harry’s hand. “Don’t you worry about me. You’ll be in my prayers.”

“Thank you.” Harry was touched. “You’ll be in mine.”

After Mrs. Hogendobber and Officer Cooper left through the back door, Harry crumpled a mailbag.

“He’ll know that I know and that you know,” the sheriff said. “He won’t know if anyone else knows. Does anyone else know?”

“Susan Tucker.”

Rick’s eyebrows clashed together. “Oh, dammit to hell, Harry. Can’t you keep your mouth shut about anything?!”

“She’s my best friend. Besides, if anything happens to me I want someone to know at least as much as I did.”

“How do you know Susan isn’t the killer?”

“Never. Never. Never. She’s my best friend.”

“Your best friend. Harry, women who have been married to men for twenty years find out they’ve got another wife in another city. Or children grow up and find out that their sweet daddy was a Nazi war criminal who escaped to the United States. People are not what they seem and this killer appears normal, well-adjusted, and hey, one of the gang. He or she is one of the gang. Susan is under suspicion as much as anyone else. And what about Fair? He’s got medical knowledge. Doctors make clever killers.”

“Susan and Fair just wouldn’t, that’s all.”

Rick exhaled through his nostrils. “I admire your faith in your friends. If it isn’t justified you’ve got a good chance of meeting your Maker.” He picked up a pencil and tapped it against his cheek. “Do you think Susan told Ned?”

“No.”

“Wives usually talk to their husbands and vice versa.”

“She gave me her word and I’ve known her far longer than Ned has. She won’t tell.”

“So it’s only you and Susan and Mrs. Hogendobber who know the postcard signal?”

“Yes.”

He kept tapping. “We’re a small force but I’ll assign Officer Cooper to guard you. She’ll stay here in the post office and she’ll go home with you too. For a couple of days, at least.”

“Is that necessary?”

“Very necessary. Within twelve hours, max, the killer will know that Mrs. Hogendobber left town and he’ll figure out the rest. She won’t show up for her Ruth Circle at church. They’ll ask questions. I’ll have her make some calls from the station. She can say that her sister’s taken ill and she’s hurrying to Greenville. Whatever location she gives out won’t be true, of course. But Mrs. Hogendobber’s cover won’t fool the killer, any more than Mim’s exchange students are fooling anyone. Her departure is too abrupt and Mrs. Hogendobber talks for days if she’s going into Charlottesville. For an emergency trip out of state, she’d take an ad out in the Daily Progress. See, that’s what’s tough about this one—he or she knows everyone’s habits, foibles, routines. If he can’t get to Mrs. H., I’m not sure what he’ll do next. He might turn on you or he might get nervous and make a mistake. A tiny one but something we can use.”

“I hope it’s the latter and not the former.”

“Me, too, but I’m not taking any chances.”

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker drank in every word. If Harry was in danger, there was no time to lose.

32

Officer Cooper’s presence at the post office electrified everyone. Mim, Little Marilyn, and the bodyguard stopped at the sight of her.

Little Marilyn hovered at her mother’s elbow, as did the daytime female bodyguard, who could have used a shave.

“Uh, Harry, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the Cancer Ball this year.” Little Marilyn bit her lip as Mim watched.

Harry had served on the committee every year for the last six years. “Yes.”

“Given that you’re divorcing, well, it just won’t do for you to be on the committee.” Little Marilyn at least had the guts to tell her face-to-face.

“What?” Harry couldn’t believe this—it was too silly and too painful.

Mim backed up her daughter. “We can’t have you on the program. Think what it would do to dear, sweet Mignon Haristeen.”

Mignon Haristeen, Fair’s mother, was also in the Social Register and therefore important to Mim.

“She’s living in Hobe Sound, for Christ’s sake,” Harry exploded. “I don’t think she much cares what we do in Crozet.”

“Really, have you no sense of propriety?” Mim sounded like a schoolmarm.

“Who the hell are you two to bump me off the Cancer Ball?” Harry seethed. “Mim, you’re in a poisonous marriage. You sold out cheap. I don’t care if Jim has umpteen million dollars. You can’t stand him. What’s umpteen million dollars compared to your emotional health, your soul?”

Mim roared back: “I came to the marriage with my own money.”

In saying that, she said it all. Her life was about money. Love had nothing to do with it.

She slammed the door, leaving Little Marilyn and the bodyguard running to catch up.

Bad enough that Harry had lost her temper, she had criticized Mim in front of Officer Cooper.

Mim, entombed as she was in the white sepulcher of her impeccable lineage, was jarred by a person of low degree, Harry. Oh, she’d made allowances for Harry. After all, Fair had little money but the Haristeens had bloodlines. They’d once had money but lost it in the War Between the States. Never bounced back financially, but then that was the story of the South. It took vulgarians like Jim to make money again.

Mim about ripped the door off her Volvo. She was calling Mignon Haristeen the second she got home.

Courtney breezed in as Mim blew out. “Hey, what’s the matter with her?”

“Change of life,” Harry said.

Officer Cooper laughed. Courtney didn’t get it. She banged open the postal box.

“Courtney, be careful. You’ll twist the hinges if you keep that up.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Haristeen. Officer Cooper, what are you doing here?”

“Guarding your post box from fraud and bent hinges.”

Mrs. Murphy stuck her paw in the opened box from the inside. She could reach most of the boxes if the mail cart was underneath, which it was. Courtney touched her paw. Mrs. Murphy had performed this trick for Mrs. Hogendobber, who screamed when she saw the hairy little paw. Here she was, brave about her nasty postcard but scared of a cat’s paw. Well, she wasn’t used to animals. Mrs. Murphy thought about that as Courtney played with her.

Danny Tucker opened the door and carefully closed it, a change from his usual slam bang. Ever since the credit-card episode, he had walked on eggshells.

“Hello, Harry, Officer Cooper.” He glanced at Courtney. “Hello, Courtney.”

“Hello, Danny.” Courtney shut the box, thereby depriving Mrs. Murphy of a great deal of satisfaction.

Danny leaned over the counter. “Mom says you should come over for supper tonight,” he told Harry. “Dad’s staying over in Richmond.”

“Thank you. Officer Cooper will accompany me.”

“You in trouble?” Danny half hoped Harry was, so he wouldn’t be the only person with a black cloud hanging over his head.

“No.”

“Terminal speeding tickets,” Officer Cooper said laconically.

“You?” Danny exclaimed. “That old truck can’t do but fifty full-out.”

“The condition of my truck is much to be lamented but the condition of my bank account is even sorrier. Hence the truck. And I do not have a speeding ticket. Not even one.”

“Why don’t you drop a new engine in it or a rebuilt engine? My buddy Alex Baumgartner—he can do anything with an engine. Cheap, too.”

“I’ll give it my bright regard.” Harry smiled. “And tell your mom we’ll be over about six-thirty. Is that all right with you, Coop?”

“Great.” Officer Cynthia Cooper lived alone. A home-cooked meal would be a little bit of heaven.

Danny’s eyes twinkled. He wanted to appear suave but he still resembled the fourteen-year-old he in fact was. “Courtney, you come too.”

“I thought you were grounded.” Why seem eager?

“I am but you can visit me. It’s only for supper, and Mom thinks you’re a good influence.” He laughed.

“You can ride in the squad car with us,” Officer Cooper offered.

“Let me ask Daddy.” She rushed out and was back within seconds. “He said it’s okay.”

Josiah came in. “I heard you were being watched, and I was nearly run over by Mim, Little Marilyn, and that bodyguard. Hello, kids.” He noticed Courtney and Danny.

“Hello, Mr. DeWitt.” They left the post office to talk outside.

Josiah’s lower lip protruded; he pretended to be serious. “I vouch for the character of this woman. Pure as the driven snow. Clean as mountain water. Honest as Abe Lincoln. If only we could corrupt her.”

“Try harder.” Harry smiled.

He got his mail and yelled around the corner: “Is there anything I can do to relieve you of Officer Cooper’s presence? Not that we don’t think you’re wonderful, Officer Cooper, but you’ll ruin the poor girl’s sex life.”

“What sex life?” Harry said.

“My point exactly.” Josiah returned to the counter. His tone was more serious. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll take your word for it then.” He hesitated, lowered his eyes, then raised them. “Any word from Stafford?”

“Not that I know of, and Mim let me know I wasn’t winning any personality contest, but then she isn’t winning one with me either, the stuck-up bitch.”

Josiah’s eyes opened wider. He’d rarely seen Harry angry. “She exhausted every adjective in describing to me her feelings about ‘the Stafford episode,’ as she calls it. Mim and I have an understanding of sorts. She doesn’t meddle in my personal life and I don’t meddle in hers, but she’s quite wrong about this. Of course, just why Little Marilyn selected Fitz-Gilbert remains a mystery. Any quieter and the man would be in a coma.”

“When’s he going to show his face?” Harry inquired.

“Mama plans a small ‘do’ at Farmington Country Club but she keeps moving the date. She’s more rattled than she lets on about . . . things.”

“Aren’t we all?” Harry pushed around the rubber-stamp holder.

He smoothed his salt-and-pepper hair. “Yes—but I prefer not to think about it. I can’t do anything about it anyway.”

33

Mrs. Murphy, ear cocked to catch mouse sounds, prowled in the barn. It had been a long day at the post office. When they arrived home Mrs. Murphy hurried toward the barn, accompanied by Tucker. High in the hayloft she caught sight of a black tail hanging over the side of a bale. She climbed up the ladder to the loft. “Paddy?”

He opened one golden eye. “You gorgeous thing. I’ve been waiting for you. It’s a good thing you woke me up or I would have slept right through until tonight.” He stretched. “I remembered our brief conversation under a full moon and a canopy of stars. . . .”

She twitched her tail. His flowery speech made her impatient. He continued.

“And spurned though I was, your words were engraved on my heart. I saw something odd. I didn’t think about it at the time and I wish I had, because I would have investigated, but my blood was up and you know how that is.”

“What?” Mrs. Murphy’s ears pitched forward; her whiskers swept forward. Every muscle was on alert.

“I was hunting out near the old Greenwood tunnel. A rabbit shot out of the tunnel and I chased him clear down to the Purcell McCue estate. That damned golden retriever of theirs lumbered out, mouth running, and I lost my rabbit.”

“Go up a tree?”

“Me? That toothless old hound. No, I dashed right in front of his nose and walked on home. Then I remembered what you said and I came here.”

“The tunnel’s sealed.”

“But I saw the rabbit come out of it.”

“Do you remember exactly where?”

“He moved pretty fast but I think it was near the bottom. It’s covered with foliage. Hard to see.”

“How do you know he wasn’t hiding in the foliage and you flushed him out?”

“I don’t, but I swear I saw him pop out of a hole at the very bottom. Can’t be sure but, well—I thought you’d like to know.”

“Thanks, Paddy. I don’t know how I can make it up to you.”

“I do.”

“Not that way.” Mrs. Murphy cuffed his ears. “Come on, let’s tell Tucker.”

The two cats joined Tucker. Conversation grew excited.

“We’ve got to get up there!” Tucker shouted above the voices. “That’s the only way we’ll ever know.”

“I know we’ve got to get up there but it’s a good day’s journey, and we can’t leave Harry now that she’s in danger.” Mrs. Murphy spat, she was so vehement.

“How are you going to convince her to go up there in the first place?” The human race didn’t rank high in Paddy’s book.

“Harry catches on if you keep after her.” Tucker defended her friend.

“If we can just think of something—”

“More dead birds and moles?”

“No.” Mrs. Murphy jumped on the water trough. “The Xeroxed papers. Let’s try that when we get inside.”

“Oh.” Tucker’s liquid brown eyes clouded. “That will fry her.”

“Better mad than dead,” Paddy said matter-of-factly.

34

“I’d better learn to quack, since I’m going to waddle for the next three days.” Officer Cynthia Cooper rubbed her stomach as she entered Harry’s house.

“Mim spends a fortune on her cook, and Susan Tucker’s much better—for free, too.” Harry dumped her satchel on the kitchen table, since they had come in through the back door. The last time Harry used the front door was for her father’s funeral party. “Let me show you the guest bedroom.”

“No, I’ll sleep in your room and you sleep in the guest bedroom. If anyone sneaks around looking for you, he or she will come to your bedroom first.”

“You don’t really believe the killer is going to sneak around up here in the middle of the night just because he or she knows I’ve figured out the postcard signal?” Harry wanted to think she was safe.

“It seems unlikely, but then everything about this crime is unlikely.”

“Follow me!” Mrs. Murphy shouted over her shoulder. She galloped into Harry’s bedroom, knocked over a lamp, and threw the Xeroxed papers on the hooked rug.

“Yahoo!” Tucker pretended to chase Mrs. Murphy. “Should I chew the papers?”

“No, nitwit. Circle the bed,” Mrs. Murphy ordered the dog. “When she gets here to spank us, hide under the bed with me.”

Harry, followed by Officer Cooper, charged into the room. “All right, you two!”

Mrs. Murphy hopped on the bed, performed a perfect somersault, and then as Harry reached for her she scooted off and flattened herself under the bed. Tucker was already there.

The muslin material underneath the mattress hung invitingly. From time to time Mrs. Murphy would lie on her back and pull herself, paw over paw, from one end of the bed to the other. Shreds of material gave testimony to her lateral rappeling technique. She reached up and sank in her claws.

“Don’t,” Tucker warned. “She’s furious enough as it is.”

“That’s enough, you two! I mean it. I really mean it this time. Damn, the lamp is broken.”

“Was it valuable?” Officer Cooper knelt down to pick up the pieces. She could see a doggie, ears down, staring at her. “That dog is laughing at me, I swear it.”

“A real comedienne.” Harry hunkered down too. “Mrs. Murphy, what have you done to my bed?”

“If you’d clean under here more often you’d have noticed by now,” Mrs. Murphy answered.

“The lamp not only wasn’t valuable, it was the ugliest lamp in three counties. I never got around to buying a good one. Actually, I barely have time to brush my teeth and eat.”

“H-m-m,” said Cooper.

“Oh, jeeze,” Mrs. Murphy moaned. “Here comes the lament of Father Time, gray hair and slowed reflexes. I wish she’d get over it! Dammit, Harry, the papers!”

“Don’t yowl at me, pussycat. I can sit on this bed and wait a long time for you to come out,” Harry threatened while still on her knees. “Might as well clean up this mess.” She began picking up the papers.

Officer Cooper read one as she helped. “Where’d you find these?”

“You know perfectly well, or doesn’t Rick Shaw tell you anything?”

“Oh, this and the ledger is what you filched from Maude’s desk? That got his knickers in a twist.” She giggled.

“Yeah.” Harry put the papers on the bed. “Mrs. Hogendobber and I only copied them. It’s not as if we obstructed justice.”

“Our sheriff wants to know everything. He’s a good sheriff.” She began reading again.

“Which one is that?” Harry’s knees cracked when she unbent to sit on the bed.

“November 4, 1851. Addressed to the President and Directors, Board of Public Works, from the Engineer’s Office of the Blue Ridge Railroad.”

“Too bad he couldn’t start with ‘Dear Honey’—think of the stationery it would have saved him,” Harry remarked. “I think that letter is about the temporary bridge built at Waynesboro so the men could haul materials over the mountains.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Wow. I can’t believe this. The original price of labor when the tunnel was contracted was seventy-five cents per day, and it shot up to eighty-seven and a half cents for some workers and even one dollar for others. Men risked their lives for eighty-seven and a half cents!”

“A different world.” Harry handed Officer Cooper another sheet, the overhead light casting a dim shadow on the policewoman’s blond hair. “This one’s interesting.” She started to read.

“November 8, 1853. He wrote a lot in November, didn’t he?” She read on. “‘. . . we were suddenly taken by surprise by the eruption of a large vein of water, for which we were obliged to take hands from their work, and set them to pumping, until we could obtain machinery for the same purpose, working by horsepower. This circumstance has been repeated several times during the year, successive veins of water having been encountered, until the body of water we have now to keep down amounts to no less than one and a half hogshead per minute, ninety hogshead per hour.’ ” She whistled. “They could have drowned in there.”

“Digging tunnels is dangerous work and this is before dynamite, remember. He created a siphon to evacuate the water and it was the longest siphon on record. Here’s another one.”

Mrs. Murphy grumbled under the bed. “I don’t feel like sleeping under the bed. Are they ever going to get it or not?”

“Beats me.” Tucker yawned.

“H-m-m.” Cooper squinted at the page. “December 9, 1855. Lot of technical stuff about the grades and curves and timbering the excavation.” She selected a more dramatic passage. “. . . some time in February, 1854, an immense slide from the mountain completely blocked up the western entrance, and, coming down as fast as removed, from a height of about one hundred feet, effectually prevented the construction of the arch at this end, until late in the fall of the same year.’ ” She turned to Harry. “How old was Claudius Crozet at this time?”

“He was born December 31, 1789, so he would have been just shy of his sixty-sixth birthday.”

“Enduring this kind of physical labor? He must have been tough as nails.”

“He was. He was a genius really. Politics cost him his job as First Engineer of the state, and twelve engineers couldn’t do the work of one Crozet, so Richmond had to eat humble pie and ask him back in 1831. This was long before he built the tunnels. Know what else he did?”

“Not a clue.”

“Brought the first blackboard to West Point. He taught there starting in 1816. Can you imagine teaching without a blackboard? America must have been primitive. The level of education was so low at West Point that he had to teach his class math before he could teach them engineering. It’s a wonder we didn’t lose the Mexican War.”

“Guess he raised the standard of education. Lee was an engineer, you know.”

“I know. Every good Southern kid knows that—that and Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign. And that ‘you all’ is plural, never singular, and that corn bread—How’d I get on this?”

“You’re wound up. All that sugar in Susan’s sauce on the veal.”

“Maybe so. This is my favorite.” Harry plucked a letter from the disorganized pile. “Crozet was being criticized in the newspapers both for the length of time the tunnels were taking and for their location, so he wrote to a friend: ‘Strange things are now going on, of which you may have seen some notice. Most scurrilous and unfair attacks directed against me have appeared in some papers, especially the “Valley Star.” Though few will notice such things, except with disgust, yet it is proper I should be informed of them, otherwise the seeds of slander may grow around me, without my having a chance to cut them off in time.’ He then asks his friend to send him clippings he might come across. He gave as his address ‘Brooksville, Albemarle.’ ” She kicked off her shoes and put down the letter. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. Try to do something new, something progressive, and you’re crucified. I don’t blame him for being touchy.”

“Do you think there’s treasure in one of the tunnels?”

“Oh—I’d like to think there is.” Harry curled her toes.

“Car! Car! Car!” Tucker warned and ran from under the bed to the front door.

“Cut the lights,” Officer Cooper commanded. “Get on the floor!”

Harry hit the floor so hard she knocked the wind out of herself and found herself nose to nose with Mrs. Murphy, who had started to wiggle out from under the bed.

Officer Cooper, pistol in hand, crept toward the front door. She waited. Whoever was in the car wasn’t getting out, although the headlights had been turned off. The living room light gave evidence that someone was home and Tucker was hollering her head off.

“Shut up.” Mrs. Murphy bumped the dog. “We know there’s a car outside. Cover the back door. I’ll take the front.”

Tucker did as she was told. Officer Cooper flattened herself beside the front door.

The car door slammed. Footsteps clicked up to the front door. For a long agonizing moment nothing happened. Then a soft knock.

A harder knock, followed with “Harry, you in there?”

“Yes,” Harry called out from the bedroom. “It’s BoomBoom Craycroft,” Harry told Officer Cooper.

“Stay on the floor!” Cooper yelled.

“Harry, what’s wrong?” BoomBoom heard Cynthia Cooper’s voice and didn’t recognize it.

“Stay where you are. Put your hands behind your head.” Officer Cooper flicked on the front porch light to behold a bewildered BoomBoom, hands clasped behind her head.

“I’m not armed,” BoomBoom said. “But there’s a thirty-eight in the glove compartment. It’s registered.”

Mrs. Murphy slunk behind Officer Cooper’s heels. If anything went wrong she would climb up a leg—in BoomBoom’s case a bare one—and dig as deeply as she could.

Officer Cooper slowly opened the door. “Stay right where you are.” She frisked BoomBoom.

Harry, on all fours, peeked around the bedroom door. Sheepishly she stood up.

BoomBoom caught a glimpse of her. “Harry, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. What are you doing here?”

“Can I come inside?” BoomBoom’s eyes implored Officer Cooper.

“Keep your hands behind your head and the answer is yes.”

As BoomBoom entered the house, Cooper shut the door behind her, gun still cocked. BoomBoom had plenty she wanted to say to Harry but the presence of Officer Cooper inhibited her.

“Harry, I’ve ransacked Kelly’s office. Ever since you dropped by I’ve just gone wild and—I found something.”

35

Crumpled sheets of yellow legal paper, the penciled-in mileage numbers smeared, shone under the kitchen light. Harry, BoomBoom, Officer Cooper, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker gathered around the old porcelain-topped table. Still leery, Coop kept her pistol in her hand.

“I checked the mileages of the trucks against the depreciation in Marie’s ledger. They don’t jibe,” BoomBoom pointed out. “Nor is there any accounting for this bill.” She produced a faded invoice for a huge amount of epoxy and paint resin. The bill was from North Carolina.

“Maybe the added mileage on the trucks reflects hauling the materials back here?” Harry said.

“It’s three hours to Greensboro and three hours back. We’re looking at thousands of miles.” BoomBoom’s misty-mocha fingernail pinned down the long number as though it were a butterfly. “Another thing. I asked around the plant if anyone had done extra hauling over the last four years. No one had. This isn’t to say that someone might not be lying but my hunch is, whatever was being carried, Kelly drove it.”

Officer Cooper flipped through the four years of mileage figures. “There’s no way to tell if these were short hops or long ones. You only have the monthly figures.”

“Right. But I subtracted them from Marie’s figures, or rather I subtracted Marie’s figures from these, and it averages out to one thousand miles per month for the big panel truck. The other trucks have less mileage on them.”

“Jesus, that’s a lot of resin.” Harry pushed back her chair. “Anyone want a drink?”

“No, thanks,” they both said.

“He wasn’t transporting resin and epoxy. I found one bill for that. I mean, there could be others but that’s all I found, so I think he was taking something else in the panel truck as well as occasionally using a smaller truck.”

“BoomBoom, one thousand miles a month is a one-way trip to Miami, drug capital of the U.S.,” Coop observed. “I take that back. Any city over five hundred thousand people is a drug capital these days.”

“If Kelly was moving drugs he’d certainly be smart enough to disguise it as something else.” Harry had always liked Kelly. “And he often drove the trucks. He liked being outside; he liked physical work. I suppose he and Maude linked up four years ago. She must have helped him package the stuff—if it was drugs.”

“Don’t get fixated on cocaine, or even heroin,” Officer Cooper advised. “There’s a big market in speed and steroids. He’d avoid the South Americans that way. Those boys play rough.”

“He brought in drugs before, though, didn’t he?” Harry asked.

BoomBoom closed her mouth.

“He’s dead. There isn’t anything I can do about crimes of the past,” Coop said.

BoomBoom sighed. “He gave it up. He gave up using the stuff. He used to say that the drug lords and high government officials were in collusion over the drug trade. The congressmen and senators on the take, as well as the people under them, didn’t want their nontaxable income removed. ‘It’s a damned sin,’ he’d say. ‘The American people are losing billions of dollars in taxes from drugs, taxes that could help people. Why is alcohol a state-supported drug to the exclusion of other drugs? You can’t stop the trade. You can’t legislate human behavior.’ He was impassioned about it.”

“Tobacco,” Officer Cooper added laconically.

“What?” BoomBoom asked.

“It’s a legal drug. Most addictive drug we’ve got. Ask Rick Shaw.” The vision of Rick sneaking another cigarette made Coop laugh.

“Here in Virginia we know all about tobacco.” Harry examined the yellow pages. “Where’d you find these?”

“Behind the frame of the poster he had on the wall. You know, the one where the duck is sitting in the lawn chair sipping a drink and there are bullet holes over his head. It was the last place I looked, and the corner of the backing was bent.”

“I’m going to confiscate these.” Cooper reached for the papers in Harry’s hand.

“I don’t want any of this in the paper. When you finally find out who the killer is you’ll find out what they were really doing. The publicity has been grueling enough. No more!”

“I can’t control the press, BoomBoom,” Cooper truthfully replied.

“That’s up to Rick, not Officer Cooper,” Harry reminded BoomBoom.

“Do what you can, please,” BoomBoom begged.

“I’ll try.”

BoomBoom left. Harry and the policewoman watched her pull out of the driveway.

Mrs. Murphy, who had politely listened to the coversation, emitted a loud shout. “Go up to the tunnels. That’s why I threw the papers on the floor. It’s worth another look.”

“What lungs.” Cooper grinned.

“You ate leftovers from Susan’s tonight.” Harry used her Mother voice.

“Listen to me!” Mrs. Murphy bellowed.

Tucker sniffed at Mrs. Murphy’s tail, hanging over the table. “Save your breath.”

“Damn.”

“All right.” Harry got up and opened the big jar of Best Fishes. She placed four of the delicious tidbits under the cat’s bright whiskers. Mrs. Murphy, in a fit, knocked the treats off the counter and stalked out of the room.

“So emotional,” Officer Cooper said as Tucker scarfed down the treats.

“Like people,” Harry said.

36

At seven forty-five the next morning, the phone rang in the Crozet post office.

“Hello,” Harry answered.

“Did you catch the killer yet?” Mrs. Hogendobber’s voice boomed.

“How are you?” Harry was surprised at how happy Mrs. Hogendobber’s call made her.

“Bored. Bored. Bored. Being under threat of death isn’t as much torture as being out of the swim. Did you catch him?”

“No.”

“Any clues?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me. I’m far away. I can’t blab.”

“Get thee behind me, Satan.”

“Mary Minor Haristeen, how dare you quote the New Testament to me like that? Why, I’m appalled at the suggestion that I would tempt you. I’m not tempting you. I’m simply trying to help. Sometimes a person considering the same evidence will see something new. Many cases have been solved that way.”

“If you’re far away, Rick Shaw can’t make your life miserable. He can sure muck up mine.”

This idea dawned on Mrs. Hogendobber and set. “He’d be thrilled for an answer. Now, I’ve known you since the day you were born. Prettiest little baby I ever saw. Even prettier than BoomBoom Craycroft—”

“Don’t stretch the truth,” Harry interrupted.

“You were—upon my soul, you were. You know I won’t breathe a word of this and I do have good ideas.”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, I can’t speak as freely as I would wish.”

“Oh, I see.” Mrs. Hogendobber’s voice registered her thrill with the development. “Someone we know?”

“Yes, but not of the inner circle.”

“Reverend Jones.”

“Now why would you mention his name?”

“He’s a lovely man but he’s not of my denomination. I don’t consider him of the inner circle.”

“Hardly any of us attend your church. I’m an Episcopalian.”

Mrs. Hogendobber, a self-confessed expert on Protestant churches, corrected Harry. “You are entirely too close to the Catholic church and so is Reverend Jones. The real Reformation came when churches such as mine, The Holy Light, freed The Word to the people. However, you don’t even attend Saint Paul’s, so you ought to stop claiming that you are an Episcopalian. You are a lapsed Episcopalian.”

“Is that like fallen arches?”

“Harry, such subjects are not humorous and it grieves me that you don’t see the light. That’s why we’re called The Holy Light.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Who’s there? Will they be offended if you tell?”

“I don’t think so. It’s Officer Cooper.”

“Really?” The husky voice shot upward.

“Really. Now I’ve got to get back to work. You take care of yourself.”

“I want to come home.” Mrs. Hogendobber sounded like a miserable child.

“We want you to come home.” Harry thought to herself: Some of us do. Harry missed her.

“I’ll call tomorrow. I can’t give you my number. ’Bye.”

“’Bye.” Harry hung up the phone. “She’s a pip.”

“There’s another one at the door.”

Harry smiled and kept silent as she unlocked the door for Mim Sanburne, who was unusually early. She paused but did not say hello.

“Good morning, Mim.” Harry decided a lesson in manners might be amusing.

Big Marilyn’s expertly frosted hair caught the light. “Are you under house arrest?”

“We’re rehashing the Stamp Act and how it led up to the Revolution,” Officer Cooper retorted.

“Deference is greatly to be sought after in public servants. Our sheriff prides himself on his staff. But then—” Mim didn’t finish what would have been a threat, for Josiah jauntily opened the door. Nor did she tell Harry that she had indeed called Mignon Haristeen, who told her to mind her own goddamned business and reinstate Harry on the Cancer Ball committee. Yes, Mignon deplored the divorce but Harry had worked hard for the charity and the charity should come first. That made Mim back down.

“Stop what you’re doing and come on over to the shop,” Josiah said. “I’ve worked a miracle.”

“I’ll come over when Larry gives me my lunch break.”

“That’s no fun. We should go now—the more the merrier.” He swept his arm to include Mim and Officer Cooper.

“Thrilled,” Mim said without conviction.

Susan pulled up at the same time as Rick Shaw.

Josiah watched them through the window. “I envy you, Harry. You’re at the hub of Crozet–Grand Central.”

“Hi,” Susan called out.

Rick Shaw came in on her heels. “I need a buddy today when I ride,” she said. “You’re it, Harry.”

“Okay—but I think we’ll melt.”

Rick ushered himself behind the counter and collected BoomBoom’s papers from Officer Cooper. He made no attempt to hide this collection, but he didn’t draw attention to it either. “Has she been a good girl?” He nodded in Harry’s direction.

“Good as gold.”

“Officer Cooper, how long are you going to shadow Harry? Will I ever be able to have an intimate dinner with her?” Josiah emphasized the “intimate.”

“Only if you do the cooking,” came Cooper’s swift reply.

“Where’s Mrs. Murphy?” Susan inquired.

“Pouting in the mail bin,” Harry said.

“Sheriff Shaw, would you like to see the shop before I open it? You wouldn’t know it was the same shop,” Josiah persisted.

It wasn’t. Harry dropped by after lunch. Well, after what started out as lunch and ended up being an appetite killer. She zipped into Crozet Pizza, only to behold BoomBoom and Fair in earnest conversation at a table. She was beginning to like BoomBoom more and Fair less but she couldn’t bear them together. She left without even a slice of that famous pizza.

Maude’s shop, transformed into a high-quality antiques showroom, conveyed that sleek, urbane yet country mix that was Josiah’s forte. The packing materials were arranged in the back room and even they looked inviting. Officer Cooper rummaged around. She loved antiques.

“You’re glum, sweetie. What’s up?” Josiah sidled over to Harry.

“Oh, Fair and BoomBoom were at Crozet Pizza. It’s silly for it to hurt, but it does.”

He curled his arm around her shoulders. “Harry, anyone who ever died of love deserved it. There are other fish in the sea and besides, you’ve wasted far too much time, far too much, on Pharamond Haristeen.”

“I guess.”

Officer Cooper rested herself in a cushy wing chair to better appreciate the discussion.

“It’s a new day tomorrow, brighter and better.” He turned to Cooper. “You and I are going to be friends. You have exquisite taste, I can see, but tell me, is my favorite postmistress really in danger?”

“I can’t answer that.”

Josiah pulled Harry even closer to him. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Mrs. Hogendobber certainly was packed off in great haste. If she’s on vacation, so to speak, and you’ve got a police dogsbody—pardon me—that means the authorities are worried about her and you. Well, so am I.”

Officer Cooper crossed her legs. “I know you’ve spoken to Rick but for my satisfaction, who do you think is the killer?”

“I don’t know, which is so frustrating . . . unless it was Mrs. Hogendobber and you’ve locked her up to keep the townies from lynching her. Mrs. H., a killer—unlikely, although she can kill a conversation faster than Limburger cheese.”

“Any idea about motive?” Harry asked.

“Some sort of grudge, I should think.”

“Why do you say that?” Officer Cooper shifted her position.

“He’s humiliated the bodies, if you think about it. I think that bespeaks some kind of powerful emotion. Anger. Jealousy perhaps. Or he was spurned.”

“You’re such a romantic. I think it’s over money, pure and simple.” Harry folded her arms across her chest. “And the mutilation of the bodies is to keep us away from the real issue.”

“Which is?” Josiah’s eyebrows raised.

“Damned if I know.” Harry threw up her hands.

“No. Damned if you do, because he would kill you—according to your analysis. According to my analysis you’re perfectly safe.”

“Let’s hope you’re right.” Officer Cooper smiled up at Josiah.

37

Lolling under the crepe myrtle behind Maude’s shop, Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and Pewter waited for Harry to be released from her obligatory socializing.

Pewter batted at a red ant scooting through the grass. “Black ants are okay but these little red ones bite like blazes.”

“Better than fleas.” Mrs. Murphy lay on her back, her four legs in the air, tail straight out.

“Last year was the worst, the absolute worst.” Tucker pricked her ears, then relaxed them. “Every week I was drenched with a bath, doused with flea killer, the worst.”

“For me it was flea mousse. Harry doesn’t like bathing me, for which I am grateful. But, Pewter, this mousse smells like rancid raspberries and it’s sticky. Rolling in dirt, grass, even rubbing against the bark of a tree does no good. This year I’ve been moussed once.”

“Market embraces the concept of the flea collar. The first week the fumes were so intense my eyes watered. After that I figured out how to wriggle out of them. He’s so slow it took four lost flea collars before he gave up.”

“Do you like humans?” Tucker addressed Pewter.

“Not especially. A few I like. Most I don’t” was her forthright reply.

“Why?” Mrs. Murphy twisted her head so she could better observe Pewter. She stayed on her back.

“You can’t trust them. Hell’s bells, they can’t even trust each other. Take a cat, for instance. If you wander into another cat’s territory, you know it right away. Unless there’s an important reason to be there, you leave. The lines are clear. Nothing is clear with humans, not even mating. A human being will mate with another human being for social approval. They rarely sleep with the person who’s right for them. But humans are much more like sheep than cats. They’re easily led and they don’t look where they’re going until it’s too late.”

“They aren’t all like sheep,” Tucker responded.

“No, but I agree with Pewter—most of them are. Something terrible happened to the human race way back in time. They separated from nature. We live with a human who has some connection to the seasons, to other animals, but she’s a country person. They’re few and far between. And the further humans move from nature, the crazier they get. In the end it’s what will destroy them.”

“I don’t give a damn if they die, every last one. I just don’t want to go with them, if it’s the bomb you’re talking about.” Pewter slashed her tail through the grass.

“The bomb’s the least of it.” Mrs. Murphy shook herself and sat up. “They’ll kill the fish in the rivers and then the fish in the oceans. They’ll wipe out more and more species of mammals. They won’t have good water to drink after they kill the fish. They won’t even have good air to breathe. If you don’t have an adequate oxygen supply, how can you think clearly? Worse, they have no sense of when and how much to breed. Even a squirrel can read a bad acorn harvest and hold back breeding. A human can’t read harvests. They keep reproducing. Do you know there are over five billion humans on the earth right now as I speak? They can’t feed what they’ve got and they’re breeding more.”

“Plus they’re breeding sick ones because they won’t cull.” Tucker’s eyes were troubled. “Sick in body and sick in mind. If I have a weak puppy, I’ll kill it. It’s my obligation to the rest of the litter. They won’t do that.”

“Do it! My God, they scream murder, and when they have to raise taxes to pay for the criminal acts of the sick in mind, or pay for the increased care of the physically weak, they pitch a fit and fall in it. They just won’t realize they’re another animal and the laws of nature apply to them too.” Pewter’s pupils expanded.

“They think it’s cruel. You know, Pewter, you are right. They are crazy. They won’t kill a diseased newborn but they’ll flock by the millions to kill one another in a war. Didn’t World War II kill off about forty-five million of them? And World War I axed maybe ten million? It almost makes me laugh.” Mrs. Murphy watched Harry and Officer Cooper leave Maude’s shop by the back door. “I don’t much care if they die by the millions, truth be told, but I don’t want Harry to die.”

Pewter trilled, a sound above a purr. “Yeah, Harry’s a brick. We should make her an honorary cat.”

“Or an honorary dog,” Tucker rejoined. “She says that cats and dogs are the lares and penates of a household, the protective household gods. Harry’s big on mythology but I fancy the comparison.”

Harry and Officer Cooper walked over to the crepe myrtle.

“A kitty tea party.” Harry scratched Pewter at the base of her tail. Tucker licked her hand. “Excuse me, a kitty and doggie tea party. Well, come on, troops. Back to work.”

38

Bob Berryman prided himself on his physical prowess. Stronger in his early fifties than when he played football for Crozet High, he’d grown even more vain about his athletic abilities. Time’s theft of speed made Berryman play smarter. He played softball and golf regularly. He was accustomed to dominating men and accepting deference from women. Maude Bly Modena didn’t defer to him. If he thought about it, that was why he had fallen in love with her.

He thought about little else. He replayed every moment of their time together. He searched those recollections, fragments of conversation and laughter for clues. Far more painfully, he returned to the railroad tracks today. What was out here halfway between Crozet and Greenwood?

Immediately before her death, Maude had jogged this way. She took the railroad path once a week. She liked to vary her routes. Said it kept her fresh. She didn’t run the railroad path more frequently than other jogging routes, though. He backtracked those also, with Ozzie at his heels.

Kelly and Maude had never seemed close to him. He drew a blank there. He reviewed every person in Crozet. Was she friendly to them? What did she truly think of them?

A searing wind whipped his thinning hair, a Serengeti wind, desert-like in its dryness. The creosote from the railroad tracks stank. Berryman shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned east toward town, then west toward the Greenwood tunnel.

She used to joke about Crozet’s treasure, and given Maude’s thoroughness, she’d read about Claudius Crozet. The engineer fascinated her. If she could only find the treasure she could retire. Retail was hard, she said, but then they shared that thought, since Berryman moved more stock trailers than anyone on the East Coast.

It wasn’t until ten o’clock that evening, in the silence of his newly rented room, that Berryman realized the tunnel had something to do with Maude. Impulsively, driven by wild curiosity as well as grief, he hurried to his truck, flashlight in hand, Ozzie at his side, and drove out there.

The trek up to the tunnel, treacherous in the darkness on the overgrown tracks, had him panting. Ozzie, senses far sharper than his master’s, smelled another human scent. He saw the dull glow at the lower edge of the tunnel where dappled light escaped through the foliage. Someone was inside the tunnel. He barked a warning to his master. Better he’d stayed silent. The light was immediately extinguished.

Berryman leaned against the sealed tunnel mouth to catch his breath. Ozzie heard the human slide through the heavy brush. He dashed after him. One shot put an end to Ozzie. The shepherd screamed and dropped.

Berryman, thinking of his dog before himself, ran to where Ozzie disappeared. He crashed through the brush and beheld the killer.

“You!”

Within one second he, too, was dead.

39

Rick Shaw, Dr. Hayden McIntire, and Clai Cordle and Diana Farrell of the Rescue Squad stared at Bob Berryman’s body. He was seated upright behind the driver’s wheel of his truck. Ozzie, also shot, lay beside him. Bob had been shot through the heart and once again through the head for good measure. In his breast pocket was a postcard of General Lee’s tomb at Lexington, Virginia. It read, “Wish you were here.” There was no postmark. His truck was parked at the intersection of Whitehall Road and Railroad Avenue, a stone’s throw away from the post office, the train depot, and Market Shiflett’s store. A farmer on his way to the acres he rented on the north side of town found the body at about quarter to five in the morning.

“Any idea?” Rick asked Hayden.

“Six hours. The coroner will be more exact but no more than six, perhaps a little less.” Hayden thought his heart would break every time he looked at Ozzie. He and Bob had been inseparable in life and were now inseparable in death.

Rick nodded and reached into his squad car. Picking up the mobile phone, he commanded the switchboard to get him Officer Cooper.

A sleepy Cynthia Cooper soon greeted him.

“Coop. There’s been another one. Bob Berryman. But this time the killer was in a hurry. He abandoned his usual modus operandi. No cyanide. He didn’t have time to slice and dice the body either. He just left two bullet holes and a postcard. Stick to Harry. I’ll talk to you later. Over and out.”

40

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker learned the news from the town crier, Pewter. The fat gray cat, asleep in the store window, heard the truck in the near distance early that morning. Pewter was accustomed to hearing cars and trucks before dawn. After all, the drunks have to come home sometime; so do the lovers, and the farmers have to be up before dawn. Ozzie’s death hit the animals like a bombshell. Was he killed protecting Berryman? Was he killed so he couldn’t lead Rick Shaw to the murderer? Or was the murderer losing his marbles and going after animals too?

“If only I’d known, I would have jumped on the ice cream case and seen who did this,” Pewter moaned.

“There was no way for you to know,” Tucker comforted her.

“Poor Ozzie.” Mrs. Murphy sighed. The hyper dog had tried her patience but she didn’t wish him dead.

Bedlam overtook the post office. Harry had time to adjust to this latest horror because Officer Cooper prepared her, but nobody was prepared for the onslaught of reporters. Even the New York Times sent down a reporter. Fortunately, Crozet had no hotels, so this swarm of media locusts had to nest in Charlottesville, rent cars, and drive west.

Rob Collier fought his way through a traffic jam to deliver his mail.

“Goddamn!” He chucked the bags on the floor, quickly shutting the door behind him as one reporter in a seersucker jacket tried to come through.

“Maybe we’d better bolt the windows,” Harry remarked.

Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and Pewter scratched at the back door. Officer Cooper let them in. “I think your children have relieved themselves. Pewter’s in tow.”

“I refuse to stay in the market another minute!” Pewter bitched loudly. “You can’t move in there.”

Mrs. Murphy noted, “You stayed long enought to push your mug in front of the TV cameras.”

“I did not! They chose to highlight me.”

“Girls, girls, calm yourselves.” Harry poured crunchies in a bowl for everyone and returned to the front.

Rob stared out the window. “I heard on the radio that the killer leaves a mark, a momento. That’s how Rick knows it’s the same fellow. Bob Berryman . . . well, ladies, at least he exited this life with speed.”

Officer Cooper joined him at the window. “Strange country, isn’t it?”

“We’re more excited by bad news than by good news. Think these reporters would be here if you’d saved a child from drowning?”

“Locals, maybe. That’s about it.” He turned to Harry. “See you this afternoon. Might be late.”

“Take care, Rob.”

“Yeah. You too.” He pushed open the front door and shut it quickly behind him, then sprinted for the truck.

The phone rang.

“Harry,” the familiar voice rang out, “I just saw the Today show. Bob Berryman!”

“Mrs. Hogendobber, the world’s gone mad,” Harry said. “Don’t come home. Whatever you do, stay put.”

“The times. The morals. People have abandoned God, Harry—He hasn’t abandoned us. It’s time for a New Order.”

“I always suspect that under a New Order, women will be kept in their old place.”

“Feminism! You can think of feminism at a time like this?” Mrs. Hogendobber was both aghast and furious at being out of the center of events.

“I’m not talking about feminism but who runs your church. The women?” Harry would prefer to talk about anything but this latest murder. She was more frightened than she let on.

“No—but we contribute a great deal, Harry, a great deal.”

“That’s not the same thing as running the show or sharing in the power.” Susan rapped on the window. Harry cradled the receiver between shoulder and ear and made a T for time sign with her hands. “Mrs. Hogendobber. I apologize. I’m so upset. The reporters have parachuted in. I’m taking it out on you. Forget everything I’ve said.”

“Actually, I won’t. You’ve given me something to think about,” she uncharacteristically replied. Travel seemed to make Mrs. H. more liberal. “Now you watch out, hear?”

“I hear.”

“I’ll call tomorrow. Bye-bye.”

Harry hung up the phone. Officer Cooper let Susan in.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. If the killer has any heart maybe he’ll fire on these reporters. What are we going to do? I had to walk over here. It’s gridlock out there.”

“You know”—Harry shoved a mail sack in Susan’s direction; to hell with rules—“I think the killer is loving this.”

Officer Cooper grabbed a mail bin. “I think so too.”

“Well, I’ve got an idea.” Harry motioned for Susan and Coop to get close. She whispered: “Let’s give him a little zinger of our own. Let’s put graveyard postcards in everyone’s mailbox.”

“You’re kidding.” Susan’s hands involuntarily flew up to her chest as though to protect herself.

“No, I am not. No one knows about the postcards but me and you, and Rick and Coop. They know there’s some telling sign, but they don’t know what it is. Think Rick told anyone else?”

“Not yet,” Coop answered.

“We won’t scare anyone but the killer,” Harry said. “He won’t know who sent the postcard. But he’ll know we’re playing with him.”

“You’d better damn well hope he doesn’t figure out who we are.” Susan folded her arms across her chest.

“If he does, I guess we’ll fight it out,” Harry replied.

“Harry, forget fighting. He’ll blindside you.” Coop’s voice was low.

“Okay, okay, I shouldn’t sound so cocky. He’s killed three times. What’s another one? But I think we can rattle his chain. Dammit, it’s worth a try. Susan, will you buy the postcards? I know there are postcards of Jefferson’s grave. Maybe you can find others.”

“I’ll do it, but I’m scared,” Susan admitted.

41

Rick went through the roof. A third murder on his hands, the press tearing at him like horseflies, and Mary Minor Haristeen hit him with a crackbrained idea about postcards.

He screeched into Larry Johnson’s driveway and slammed his squad car door so hard it was a wonder it didn’t fall off. The retired doctor, tending his beloved pale yellow roses, calmly continued spraying. By the time Rick joined him he was somewhat calmed down.

“Larry.”

“Sheriff. Bugs will take over the world, I swear it.” The hand pump squished as the robust old man annihilated Japanese beetles. “What can I do for you? Tranquilizers?”

“God knows I need them.” Rick exhaled. “Larry, I should have come to you before now. I hope I haven’t offended you. It was natural to interview Hayden because he’s practicing now, but you’ve known everybody and everything far longer than Hayden. I’m hoping you can help me.”

“Hayden’s a good man.” Squish. Squish. “Ever hear that line about a new doctor means a bigger cemetery?”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“In Hayden’s case it isn’t true. He’s catching on to our ways. Not like he’s some Yankee. He was raised up in Maryland. Young man, bright future.”

“Yes. We must be getting old, Larry, when thirty-eight seems young. Remember when it seemed ancient?”

Larry nodded and vigorously sprayed. “Banzai, you damned winged irritants! Go meet the Emperor.” He had been a career Army physician in World War II and Korea before returning home to practice. His father, Lynton Johnson, practiced in Crozet before him.

“I’m going to ask you to break confidentiality. You don’t have to, of course, but you’re no longer practicing medicine, so perhaps it’s not so bad.”

“I’m listening.”

“Did you ever see signs of anything unusual? Prescribe medications that might alter personality?”

“One time, I prescribed diet pills, back in the 1960’s, to Miranda Hogendobber. My God, she talked nonstop for weeks. That was a mistake. Still only lost two pounds in two years. Mim suffers a nervous condition—”

“What kind of nervous condition?”

“This and that and who shot the cat. That woman had a list of complaints when she was still in the womb. Once through the vaginal portals, she was ready to proclaim them. What put her over the top was Stafford marrying that colored girl.”

“Black, Larry.”

“When I was a child that was a trash word. It’s awful hard to change eighty years of training, you know, but all right, I stand corrected. That pretty thing was the best, the best thing that coulda happened to Stafford. She made a man out of him. Mim teetered perilously close to a nervous breakdown. I gave her Valium, of course.”

“Could she be unstable enough to commit murder?” It occurred to Rick that Mim could have slashed her pontoon boat herself, so as to appear a target.

“Anyone could be if circumstances were right—or maybe I should say wrong—but no, I think not. Mim has settled down since then. Oh, she can be as mean as a snake shedding its skin but she’s no longer dependent on Valium. Now the rest of us need it.”

“Did you treat Kelly Craycroft?”

“I checked Kelly into the drug rehabilitation center.”

“Well?”

“Kelly Craycroft was a fascinating son of a bitch. He recognized no law but his own, yet the man made sense. He had an addictive personality. Runs in the family.”

“What about hereditary insanity? What family does that run in?”

“’Bout ninety percent of the First Families of Virginia, I should say.” A wicked grin crossed his face. The spraying slowed down.

“Gimme that. I’d like to knock off a couple.” Rick attacked the beetles, their iridescent wings becoming wet with poison. A buzz, then a sputter, and then the bugs fell onto the ground, hard-backed shells making a light clinking noise. “What about Harry? Ever sick? Unstable?”

“Pulled out her back playing lacrosse in college. When it flared up I used to give her Motrin. I think Hayden still does. Harry’s a bright girl who never found her profession. She seems happy enough. You don’t think she’s the killer, do you?”

“No.” Rick rubbed his nose. The spray smelled disagreeable. “What do you think, Larry?”

“I don’t think the person is insane.”

“Fair Haristeen doesn’t have an alibi for the nights of any of the killings . . . and he has a motive as regards Kelly. Since he lives alone now, he says there’s no one to vouch for him.”

Larry rubbed his brow. “I was afraid of that.”

“What about cyanide? How hard is it to produce?” Rick pressed.

“Extremely hard, but a man with a medical background would have no trouble at all.”

“Or a vet?”

“Or a vet. But any intelligent person who took a course in college chemistry can figure it out. Cyanide is a simple compound, cyanogen with a metal radical or an organic radical. Potassium cyanide shuts off your lights before you have time to blink. Painters, furniture strippers, even garage mechanics have access to chemicals that, properly distilled, could yield deadly results. You can do it in your kitchen sink.” Larry watched the rain of dying beetles with satisfaction. “You know what this is all about, don’t you?”

“No.” Rick’s voice rose high with curiosity.

“It’s something right under our noses. Something we’re used to seeing or passing every day, as well as someone we’re used to seeing or passing. It’s so much a part of our lives we no longer notice it. We’ve got to look at our community with new eyes. Not just the people, Rick, but the physical setup. Bob Berryman did. That’s why he’s dead.”

42

Rick arrested Pharamond Haristeen III. He had no alibi. He was physically strong, highly intelligent, and possessed of expert medical knowledge. He bore a grudge against Kelly and vice versa. What he had against Maude Bly Modena, Rick wasn’t sure, but if he did arrest him it would be an action soothing to the press and the public. It could also ruin Fair’s life if he wasn’t the killer. He weighed that fact but arrested him anyway. He had to play safe. He also said yes to Harry’s plan. What did he have to lose, unless it was Harry? He issued her a revolver and no one except Cynthia Cooper knew Harry was now armed.

Mrs. Murphy sprawled on the butcher block in Harry’s kitchen. Rhythmically, her tail flicked up and down. Tucker sat by Harry at the kitchen table. Harry, Susan, and Officer Cooper hunched over their postcards, writing again and again, “Wish you were here.”

The phone rang. It was Danny for his mother. Susan grabbed the phone. “What is it this time?” She listened as he groaned that Dad had clicked off the TV in order to make him clean his room. Susan knew as she soaked up the litany of woes that having a teenaged child was aging her rapidly. Having a middle-aged husband sped up the process too. “Do as your father says.” This was followed by a renewed outburst. “Danny, if I have to come home and negotiate between you and your father you are going to be grounded until Christmas!” Another howl. “I’ll ground him, too, then. Go clean your room and don’t bother me. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. Goodbye.” Bang, she slammed the receiver down.

“Happy families,” Harry said.

“Having a teenaged son isn’t difficult. It’s the combination of father and son that’s difficult. Sometimes I think that Ned resents Danny growing stronger. He’s already two inches taller than Ned.”

“An old story.” Cooper reached for another postcard. Dolley Madison’s tombstone graced the front. “How many more of these to go?”

“About one hundred twenty-five. There are four hundred and two post boxes and we’re on the home stretch.”

“Why so few?” Susan asked.

“You want more?” Cooper was incredulous.

“No, I don’t want more, but there are three thousand residents of Crozet, by my count.”

“Rest of them didn’t buy post boxes. Most of my people are right in town itself.” Harry’s index and middle fingers began to hurt.

As the three women continued to scribble Mrs. Murphy opened a cupboard and crawled in.

Tucker hated that she couldn’t climb around like the cat. “Don’t go in there. I can’t see you if you do.”

Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out. “I like to smell the spices. There’s an aromatic tea in here that reminds me of catnip.”

“Nothing up there that smells like a beef bone, I guess?”

“Bouillon cubes. They’re in a package. I’ll get them out.” She examined the package. “I’m sorry we couldn’t sniff Bob Berryman. Wonder if that smell was on him?”

“I doubt it. Bullet did him in. I’ve checked out everyone that comes into the post office just in case that smell would be on them—you know, like something in their work. Rob smells like gas and sweat. Market smells delicious. Mim drenches herself in that noxious perfume. Fair reeks of horses and medicine. Little Marilyn’s hairspray makes my eyes water. Josiah smells like furniture wax plus his after-shave. Kelly smelled like concrete dust. Their smells are like their voices, individual.”

“What does Harry smell like to you?”

“Us. Our scent covers her but she doesn’t know it. I make sure to rub up against her and sit in her lap and so do you. Keeps other animals from getting ideas.”

Harry glanced up and beheld Mrs. Murphy chewing the bouillon package. “Stop that.” The cat jumped out of the cupboard before Harry reached her.

“Bet you get a bouillon cube.” Mrs. Murphy winked.

“Well, this is useless,” Harry fumed. She opened the package and gave Tucker one of the cubes Mrs. Murphy chewed. Brazenly, the tiger kitty sat on the counter. “Oh, here, dammit, you worked hard enough for it, but your manners are going to hell.” Mrs. Murphy delicately took the cube from Harry’s fingers.

“Last one!” Officer Cooper rejoiced.

“Now we’ll see if the other shoe drops.” Harry’s eyes narrowed.

What dropped was Harry’s jaw when she turned on the TV and saw Fair being led to jail. Damn Rick Shaw. He’d told nobody. Just let it come out on the eleven o’clock news.

She put on her shoes and dragged Cooper to the jail. Too late. Fair had been released. An alibi had been established, an alibi as upsetting to Harry as it was to Fair.

43

Ned puffed his pipe. At Harry’s request, Officer Cooper waited in the living room with Susan. The murders were ghastly but this was painful.

Upon learning that BoomBoom freed Fair by confessing that he was with her on the night of Kelly’s murder, as well as on the night of Maude’s murder, Harry called Susan.

Logically, she knew it was absurd to be shaken. Her husband had been unfaithful. Millions of husbands are unfaithful. She knew, too, in her heart that this affair must have flourished before the separation. She would be divorcing him, affair or no affair, but when she learned the details at the jail she burst out crying. She couldn’t help herself.

She called Ned. He told her to come right over.

“. . . irreconcilable differences. You can change that, of course, and now sue on grounds of adultery. You see, Harry, Virginia divorce law is, well, let’s just say this isn’t California. If you sue on grounds of adultery and the court finds in your favor, you won’t have to divide up the monies you’ve acquired during the marriage.”

“In other words, this is his punishment for fooling around.” Harry’s eyes got moist again.

“The law doesn’t state punishment—”

“But that’s what it is, isn’t it? Suing on the grounds of adultery is an instrument of revenge.” She sank back in the chair. Her head ached. Her heart ached.

Ned’s words were measured. “In the hands of some lawyers and people, you might say it’s an instrument of revenge.”

After a long, deep pause Harry spoke with resolution and clarity. “Ned, it’s bad enough that divorce in this town becomes public spectacle. This . . . this adultery suit, well, that would turn spectacle into nightmare for me and a real three-ring circus for the Mim Sanburnes of the world. You know”—she glanced at the ceiling—“I can’t even say that he’s wrong. She has something I don’t.”

The friend in Ned overcame the lawyer. “She can’t hold a candle to you, Harry. You’re the best.”

That made Harry cry again. “Thank you.” When she’d regained her composure she continued. “What do I have to gain by hurting him because I’m hurt? I can’t see anything in this but more money if I win, and my divorce isn’t about money—it really is about irreconcilable differences. I’ll stick with that. Sometimes, Ned, even with the best of intentions and the best people”—she smiled—“things just don’t work out.”

“You’ve got class, honey.” Ned came over, sat on the edge of the chair, and patted her back.

“Maybe.” She half laughed. “On the odd occasion, I’m capable of acting like a reasonable adult. I want to put this behind me. I want to go on with my life.”

44

Like clockwork, Mrs. Hogendobber called for her gossip bulletin at seven forty-five the next morning. Pewter visited from next door. The post boxes, filled, awaited their owners, and when the door opened at 8:00 A.M., Harry and Officer Cooper acted normal. Well, they thought they were normal but Officer Cooper positioned herself so she could see the boxes. Harry burned off energy in giving Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and even Tucker rides in the mail bin.

Danny Tucker arrived first, scooped out the mail, and didn’t go through it. “Sorry I didn’t get to see you last night. Mom said you had business with Dad.”

“Yeah. We got things straightened out.”

Just then Ned Tucker bounded up the steps. “Hello, everyone.” He gave Harry a big smile, then noticed the mail in his son’s hands. “I’ll take that.” He rapidly flipped through it, blinked when he saw the postcard, read it, and said aloud, “That’s Susan’s handwriting. What’s she up to now?”

Harry hadn’t thought of that. They should have assigned names. She wondered who else would recognize their handwriting.

“Dad, I’ve been really good and there’s a party tonight—”

“The answer is no.”

“Ah, come on. I could be dead by Halloween.”

“That’s not funny, Dan.” Ned opened the door. “Harry, I will relieve you of our presence.” Ned unceremoniously ushered his protesting son outside.

“Are you a regular letter writer?” Harry asked Coop.

“No. What about you?”

“Not much. We bombed that one.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t say anything except to Susan. Wonder what she’ll tell him.”

Market was next. He sorted out his mail and tossed the junk mail, including the postcard, into the trash. “Damn crap.”

“Doesn’t sound like you, Market.” Harry forced her voice to be light.

“Business is booming but I’d rather make less and have peace of mind. If one more reporter or sadistic tourist tramps into my store, I think I’ll paste them away. One newspaper creep leered at my daughter and had the gall to invite her to dinner. She’s fourteen years old!”

“Remember Lolita,” Harry said.

“I don’t know anyone named Lolita and if I did I’d tell her to change her name.” He stalked out.

“I’m not going home until he’s in a better mood,” Pewter remarked to her companions.

“So far, Harry’s idea has been a bust.” Mrs. Murphy licked her paw.

Fair sheepishly came in. “Ladies.”

“Fair,” they replied in tandem.

“Uh, Harry—”

“Later, Fair. I haven’t got the strength to hear it now.” Harry cut him off.

He went to his post box and yanked out the mail.

“What the hell is this?” He walked over to Harry and handed her the postcard.

“A pretty picture of Jefferson’s marker.”

“‘Wish you were here,’ ” Fair read aloud. “Maybe Tom thinks I should join him. Well, plenty of others do now; I guess I’ve made a mess of it.” He skidded the card down the counter. “If T.J. returned to Albemarle County today, he’d die to get away from it.”

“Why do you say that?” Officer Cooper asked.

“People come to worship at the shrine. I mean, the man stood for progressive thought, politically, architecturally. We haven’t progressed since he died.”

“You sound like Maude Bly Modena,” Harry observed.

“Do I? I guess I do.”

“Guess you’ll be dating BoomBoom out in the open now.”

Fair glared at Harry. “That was a low blow.” He stormed out.

“Jesus, it isn’t even ten in the morning. Wonder who else we can offend?” Officer Cooper laughed.

“It’s the tension, and all those reporters keep rubbing the wound raw. And . . . I don’t know. The air feels heavy, like before a storm.”

Reverend Jones, Clai Cordle, Diana Farrell, and Donna Eicher picked up their mail. Nothing much came of that. Donna also got Linda Berryman’s mail for her.

Once the post office was empty again, Harry remarked, “We were probably tasteless to put a card in Linda Berryman’s box.”

“In this case, the end justifies the means and the meanness.”

Hayden McIntire dropped by. He, too, left without examining his mail.

BoomBoom Craycroft, however, caught the meaning immediately as she put her mail into three piles: personal, business, junk. “This is attractive.” She handed the postcard to Harry. “Is this what you wish for me now?”

“I got one too,” fibbed Harry.

“Sick humor.” BoomBoom’s lips curled. “These murders flush out every weirdo we’ve got. Sometimes I think all of Crozet is weird. What are we doing festering here like a pimple on the butt of the Blue Ridge Mountains? Poor Claudius Crozet. He deserved better.” She paused and then said to Harry: “Well, I guess you deserve better, too, but I can’t bring myself to apologize. I don’t feel guilty.”

As she walked out an astonished Harry noticed Mrs. Murphy heading for the stamp pads. Quickly she sped toward them and snapped them shut. Mrs. Murphy trotted right by them as though they were of no concern to her, and wasn’t Harry silly? This upheaval over BoomBoom and Fair had upset the cat too. She hated seeing Harry suffer.

The name Crozet fired a nerve in Harry’s brain. “Cooper, if I found the buried treasure would I have to pay income tax on it?”

“We even pay death duties in this country. Of course you’d have to pay.”

“She may be getting it at last.” Mrs. Murphy pranced.

“Getting what?” Pewter hated being left out of things, so Tucker filled her in.

“The profits in Maude’s ledger. Maybe they involved selling the treasure in bits and pieces.”

“You’re soft as a grape.” Cooper smiled. “But it’s as good an explanation as any other. This doesn’t address the small, trifling fact that the tunnels are sealed shut. Rock, debris, concrete. Poor Claudius. I’d be more worried about him returning than Thomas Jefferson. Imagine coming back and seeing your life’s work, a world-class engineering feat, sealed up and forgotten.”

“Let’s go up there after work.”

“Yeah—okay.”

Just then Mim, Little Marilyn, and bodyguard entered the building. Josiah, like a well-groomed terrier, was at their heels.

Mother and daughter, strained with each other, cast a pall over the room. Josiah discreetly sorted his mail at the counter while the two women spoke in low tones.

The low tone erupted as Mim yanked the mail from Little Marilyn’s hands. “I’ll do it.”

“I can sort the mail as easily as you can.”

“You’re too slow.” Mim frantically flipped through the mail. The postcard barely dented her consciousness. She was looking for something else.

“Mother, give me my mail!”

Josiah read his postcard, Dolley Madison’s tomb. He smiled at Harry. “Is this one of your jokes?”

“I’ll give you your mail in a moment.” The cords stood out on Mim’s neck.

Little Marilyn, face empurpled, backhanded her mother’s hands, and the mail flew everywhere. Mrs. Murphy leaped on the counter to watch, as did Pewter. Tucker, behind the counter, begged to go into the front and Harry opened the door for her. She sat by the stamp machine and watched.

“I know what you’re looking for, Mother, and you won’t find it.”

Mim pretended to be in control and bent down to pick up wedding invitation replies. Josiah, leaving his mail on the counter, joined her. “Why don’t you get some fresh air, Mim? I’ll do this.”

“I don’t need fresh air. I need a new daughter.”

“Fine. Then you won’t have any children,” Little Marilyn screamed at her. “You’re looking for a letter from Stafford. You won’t find one, Mother, because I didn’t write him.” Little Marilyn paused for breath and dramatic effect. “I called him.”

“You what?” Mim leaped up so quickly the blood rushed from her head.

“Mim, darling—” Josiah attempted to calm her. She pushed him off.

“You heard me. I called him. He’s my brother and I love him and if he’s not coming to my wedding, then you aren’t coming either. I’m the one getting married. Not you.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that.”

“I’ll speak to you any way I like. I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me. I attended the right schools. I played the appropriately feminine sports—you know, Mother, the ones where you don’t sweat. Excuse me—glow. I made the right friends. I don’t even like them! They’re boring. But they’re socially correct. I’m marrying the right man. We’ll have two blond children and they’ll go to the right schools, play the right sports ad nauseam. I am getting off the merry-go-round. Now. If you want to stay on, fine. You won’t know you aren’t going anywhere until you’re dead.” Little Marilyn shook with fury, which was slowly subsiding into relief and even happiness. She was doing it at long last. She was fighting back.

Harry, hardly breathing, wanted to cheer. Officer Cooper’s eyes about popped out of her head. So this was the way the upper class behaved? The public display would eventually upset Mim more than the raw emotions.

“Darling, let’s discuss this elsewhere. Please.” Josiah gently cupped Mim’s elbow. She allowed him to guide her this time.

“Little Marilyn, we’ll talk about this later.”

“No. There’s nothing to talk about. I am marrying Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. Excitement is not his middle name, but he’s a good man and I honestly hope we make it, Mother. I would like to be happy even if only for one day in my life. You are invited to my wedding. My brother’s wife will be my matron of honor.”

“Oh, my Gawd!” Mim fainted.

45

It wasn’t until the diminishing hours of sunlight, the spreading of coppery-rich long shadows, about seven in the evening, that Harry understood what really happened in the post office.

Josiah and Officer Cooper revived Mim. Little Marilyn left. Whatever sorrow she might feel over her mother’s acute distress was well hidden. Mim had caused her enough distress over the years. If she fainted in the post office and cracked her head, so be it.

When Mim came to, with the bodyguard shoving amyl nitrite under her nostrils, she said, “I don’t fit here anymore. My life’s like an old dress.”

For a brief moment Harry pitied her.

Josiah tended to Mim, walking her to his shop.

People poured in and out of the post office for the rest of the day. Harry and Officer Cooper barely had time to go to the bathroom, much less think.

The thinking came later, in the oppressive heat redolent with the green odor of vegetation, as the two women, armed, climbed the grade on the old track up to the Greenwood tunnel. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker refused to stay in the parked car far below. They, too, panted.

“People hauled timbers up here. Even with mules, this was a bitch.”

“The old tracks run to the tunnel. Crozet built serving roads and tracks before—” Harry stopped. A yellow swallowtail butterfly twirled before her and winged off.

“Is this one of your jokes? Coop . . . Coop! Josiah said that to me after reading his card.”

“So what? Ned recognized Susan’s handwriting. ‘Wish you were here’ fizzled.”

“Don’t you see? The killer knows that apart from the sheriff, I’m the one who recognized the postcard signal. I’m the one who ran to Mrs. Hogendobber even before your people got to her. I see the mail first. He slipped. It’s him! Jesus Christ, Josiah DeWitt. I like him. How can you like a murderer?”

Officer Cooper’s face, taut, registered the information. “Well, if there is someone in that tunnel, we’re sitting ducks.”

“Like Kelly Craycroft’s poster.” Harry’s mind raced. “I don’t know how long it will take him to realize what he’s done.”

“Not long. Our people are everywhere. He may not be able to leave his shop early. When he does he’ll come for you.”

“He doesn’t know where I am.”

“Then he’ll come up here in the night if there really is anything here, or he’ll slip away. I don’t know what he’ll do but he’s not fearful.”

The closed mouth of the tunnel, wreathed in kudzu, loomed before them.

“Let’s go.” Harry pressed on.

Cooper, mental radar scanning, cautiously stepped up to the mouth. Harry, paces behind, checked out the top of the tunnel. It would be rough going, coming up behind the tunnel. In fact, it would take hours, but it could be done.

The tunnel mouth was indeed sealed shut. Only dynamite would open it.

“Look for Paddy’s rabbit hole.” Mrs. Murphy and Tucker fanned out.

Nose to the ground, Tucker smelled the faintest remains of Bob and Ozzie. “Ozzie and Berryman were here.”

Mrs. Murphy nodded. “Paddy’s got to be right. If Berryman came up here, there is a treasure!” She raced ahead of the corgi while Harry and Coop tiptoed along the mouth of the tunnel.

Hidden behind the foliage, there was a small hole at the base of the tunnel. A rabbit could easily go in and out of it. So could Mrs. Murphy.

“Don’t go in there,” Tucker warned. “We’ll do it together.”

“Okay. I’ll go first. My eyes are better.” Mrs. Murphy slipped through the hole. “Holy shit!”

“Are you all right?” Tucker, half in and half out of the hole, was digging for all she was worth.

“Yes.” Mrs. Murphy ran back to her buddy. “Can you see yet?”

“Barely.” Tucker blinked and blinked but she felt in a sea of India ink.

Slowly her eyes adjusted and she saw the treasure. It wasn’t Claudius Crozet’s treasure, but it was a king’s ransom in paintings, Louis XV furniture, carpets painstakingly rolled in heavy protective covers. Mrs. Murphy soared onto a Louis XV desk. A golden casket rested atop it. She lifted up the lid with one paw. Old, expensive jewelry glistened inside. Near the mouth of the tunnel rested an old railroad handcart. A huge bombé cabinet was on it.

“Get Harry.”

Tucker dashed to the rabbit hole and barked.

“Where’s the dog?” Officer Cooper glanced around. “Sounds like she’s inside the tunnel. That’s impossible.”

Harry pulled away brush, kudzu, and vine to reach the farthest right-hand corner of the tunnel. Tucker barked at her feet. “There’s a rabbit hole. Tucker, come out of there.”

Officer Cooper got down on her hands and knees. A black, wet nose twitched. “Come on, pooch.”

“You come in here,” Tucker replied.

“They won’t fit.” Mrs. Murphy joined her. “Let’s go out. There has to be another way in.”

Tucker grunted her way out and Mrs. Murphy danced out. Tucker jumped up at Harry. Mrs. Murphy circled her human friend. Harry understood. She crouched down, then lay flat on her belly as Cooper stepped out of the way. “There’s something in there. I need a flashlight.”

Cooper lay down. She cupped her hands around her eyes as Harry moved so she could get a better look. “Antiques. I can’t see how much but I see a big chest of drawers.”

Harry leaped up and ran her hands along the tunnel mouth. Cooper joined her. Harry knocked on the right-hand side of the sealed mouth. It sounded hollow.

“Epoxy and resin. Makes sense now, doesn’t it?” Harry said. “That furniture was not squeezed through the rabbit hole unless Josiah has Alice in Wonderland potions. Must be a trigger or a latch somewhere. I bet Kelly loved making this. I wonder how long it took him?”

“Working nights, I don’t know, a couple of months. A month. I’ve got it.” Coop found a thick vine covering a latch. The vine, kudzu, was affixed to the false front. The natural foliage grew around it.

With a click the door opened, large enough to get a railroad lorry through. The two women entered the tunnel. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker scurried inside.

“There’s a fortune in here,” Harry whispered.

Tucker’s ears went up. Mrs. Murphy froze.

“Don’t bark, Tucker. He knows the humans are here but he doesn’t know we are. Whine. Give Harry a warning.”

Tucker whined, softly. Harry leaned over to pat her. “Mommy, please pay attention,” the dog cried.

“Hide, Tuck, hide.” Mrs. Murphy jumped from a desk to the top of a wardrobe near the doorway. Tucker hid behind the lorry.

Harry felt their fear. “Cooper, Cooper,” she whispered and grabbed Cynthia’s arm. “Something’s wrong.”

Cooper pulled her pistol. Harry did too.

A light footfall played on their ears. Inside the tunnel, sounds were magnified and distorted in the 536 feet of rock. Harry crept to the right side of the opening. She stood on the other side of the lorry. Cooper remained in the deep shadows to the left.

A familiar, charming voice reached them. Josiah was too smart to appear in the opening. “I underestimated you, Harry. Never underestimate a woman. Officer Cooper, I know you’re armed. I suggest you toss out your weapon. No reason to defile Claudius Crozet’s handiwork with bloodshed—especially mine.” Cooper kept silent. “If you don’t toss out your weapon I’m going to throw in this gasoline-soaked rag and just the tiniest Molotov cocktail I happen to have with me for the evening’s enjoyment. I also have a gun, as I guess you know. It’s Kelly’s. When ballistics files its report on Bob Berryman, it will frustrate that stellar public servant Rick Shaw, and tell him Bob was killed with a dead man’s gun. It’s nasty dying in a fire and if you run out I’ll be forced to shoot you. If you throw out your weapon, Officer Cooper, perhaps we can make a deal. Something more lucrative than your vast public salaries—both of you.”

“What was the deal you made with Kelly? Or Maude?” Harry’s voice, sharp and hard, reverberated through the tunnel.

“Kelly enjoyed excellent terms, but after four years at twenty percent he got a little greedy. As you can see, there’s enough stockpiled in the tunnel that I could dispense with his services for the future. When my inventory runs low I shall find another feckless fellow eager for profit.”

“You used his paving enterprise.”

“Of course.”

“And his trucks.”

“Harry, don’t try my patience with the obvious. Officer Cooper, throw out your gun.”

“First, I want to know why you killed Maude. It’s obvious what she did, too.”

“Maudie was a dear woman but her ovaries ruled her head, I fear. You see, she really was in love with Bob Berryman. When business reasons compelled me to remove Kelly Craycroft from our board of directors, she didn’t want to be an accessory to murder.”

“Was she?”

“No. But she became frightened. What if I were caught and what if our profitable venture were disclosed? Berryman, stringing her along, kept telling her he would leave Linda, and Maude loved that cretin. A shaky partner is worse than no partner at all. She could have given us away, or worse, she could have spilled the beans to Bob Berryman—pillow talk—who with his amusing sense of honor would have traipsed directly to the authorities. You see, poor Maude had to go. Now, darlings, I’ve indulged you long enough. Throw out the gun.”

“Did you try to drown Mrs. Hogendobber?” Harry wanted to keep him talking. She had no plan, but it gave her time to think.

“No. Throw out your gun.”

Harry dropped her voice to the gossip register, a tone she prayed would be irresistible to Josiah. “Well, if you didn’t slash those pontoons, who did?”

He laughed. “I think it was Little Marilyn. A real passive-aggressive, our Little Marilyn. She didn’t go for help until she realized that two of the ladies on Mim’s yacht couldn’t swim. She just wanted to ruin her mother’s party. I can’t prove it, but that’s what I think.” He laughed again. “I would have given anything to have seen that boat sink. Mim’s face must have been fuchsia.” He paused. “Okay, enough chat. Really, there’s no point in anyone’s being hurt. Just cooperate.”

“Well, how did you get your victims to eat cyanide?”

“You are prolonging this.” Josiah sighed. “I simply poured cyanide on a handkerchief, pretending it was cologne, and quickly put it over their mouths! Presto! An instant dead person. Now get with the program, girls.”

Harry intoned. “You didn’t have to mutilate them.”

“An artist’s touch.” He sniggered.

“One more teeny-weeny question.” Harry gulped for air. Her voice was steely calm in the suffocating atmosphere. “I know you brought the goods up here in a lorry, but where did you get them in the first place?”

Josiah hooted. “That’s the best part, Harry. Mim Sanburne! I’ve been her ‘walker’ for years. The finest homes. New York, Newport, Palm Beach, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, wherever there is an elegant party, a must gathering. I’d appraise the merchandise and then one or two years later, voilà—I’d return for an engagement of a different sort. No engraved invitations. That was the easy part. You bribe a servant—the rich are notoriously cheap, you know. Pay someone enough to live on for a year and a one-way ticket to Rio. How simple to get in when the master and mistress were gone. The hard part was lifting the lorry off the track and rolling it inside the tunnel each time we were finished—that and trying to stay awake the next day. We never had to work that hard, though. Perhaps three houses a year. Distribution is easy once the fuss dies down. A small load to Wilmington or Charlotte. A side trip to Memphis. Wouldn’t snooty Mim just die? She looks down her long nose at thee and me, yet she’s consorting with a criminal—an elegant criminal.”

“Big profits, huh?”

“Ah, yes, sweet are the workings of capitalism—a lesson you’ve never learned, my girl. Now, time’s up.” His voice, hypnotic, promised all would be well. This was just a glorious lark.

Harry edged closer to the mouth and in pantomime to Coop said that she would throw out her gun. Cooper nodded. Mrs. Murphy fluffed her tail, ready to strike.

“You won’t toss in that Molotov cocktail. The fire would ruin your inventory. The smoke and commotion would bring all of Crozet up here to the tunnel. Now that would spoil everything. If we’re going into business, we’d better trust one another right now. You throw down your gun first and Officer Cooper will throw out hers.”

“Don’t take me for a fool, Harry. I’m not throwing down my gun first,” he snapped.

“You’re the creative one, Josiah. Think of something,” Harry taunted him. “You can starve us out but Rick Shaw will notice you’re missing. That won’t do. We’d better reach an agreement now.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Never underestimate the power of a woman,” Harry mocked. “I’d hate for one of us to kill the other, because you couldn’t remove the body until the middle of the night, and in this flaming heat the corpse will start to stink in two to three hours. That’s disagreeable.”

“Quite so,” came Josiah’s clipped response. “What would you do if you killed me?”

“What you did to Maude. Then I’d wait a year, and Coop and I would sell off your stash. Oh, we don’t have your contacts, Josiah, but I’m sure we’d make some kind of profit.” She lied through her teeth.

“Don’t be an ass! With me you can make a fortune. By yourself, you’ll get caught.”

“I got this far, didn’t I?”

A long silence followed. The unlit Molotov cocktail was placed at the opening. Josiah’s hand quickly withdrew.

“Proof positive of what a saint I am. There’s the Molotov cocktail.”

“Josiah”—Harry hoped to keep him talking—“how did you fake the postmarks?”

“My latent artistic impulses surged to the fore.” He smiled. “I’ve got waxes, inks, stains, bits of ormolu, you name it, to repair the furniture. I mixed up a color and then tapped the postmark letters with old typeface. The inscription came compliments of my computer. I thought the postcards a flourish. I rather relished the picture of poor Rick Shaw’s face as he tried to make sense of it—once he realized the postcards were a signature. You realized quite quickly. I was terribly impressed.”

“But not scared?”

“Me? Never.”

“Your gun.” Harry’s voice made the demand sound like a social request.

“What about Coop? Is she really in there? I want to hear her voice. How do I know you haven’t killed her?” Josiah made a demand of his own. What he wanted was to hear where she was.

“Here.” Cooper nodded to Harry. She then swiftly moved to stand right beneath Mrs. Murphy. Tucker put her front paws on the lorry.

Harry, on Coop’s signal, said, “On the count of three, you throw down your gun. She’ll throw down hers. One . . . two . . . three.” She tossed out her gun as Josiah threw his in the opening.

He had a second gun. He didn’t waste time. He bolted into the tunnel, firing randomly. Mrs. Murphy jumped, claws at the ready, onto his head. Then slid to his back. Tucker, on her hind legs, pushed the lorry, which, despite its slow pace, knocked him off balance when it bumped into him. Tucker then bit his gun hand as he stumbled to the tunnel floor, his knee hitting a steel rail. Josiah lifted his gun hand, the dog still hanging on his wrist, and aimed straight for Harry, who dropped and rolled. Mrs. Murphy hung on his back, digging into him full force. Cooper, with deliberate precision and trained self-control, fired once. Josiah grunted as the bullet sank into his torso with a thud. He fired wildly. Cooper fired one more shot. Between the eyes. He twitched and was dead.

“Tucker!” Harry rushed to the dog, bruised but wagging her tail.

Cooper scooped up Mrs. Murphy as she walked over to Harry. She kissed the kitty, whose fur still stood straight up. “Bless you, Mrs. Murphy.” She reached down and felt for Josiah’s pulse. She dropped his arm as if it were rotten meat. “Harry, if these two hadn’t thrown him off balance he would have hit one of us. His gun was on rapid fire. The tunnel isn’t that wide. He was no dummy, except for his little slip in the post office.”

Harry sat on the moist earth, Tucker licking the tears from her face. Mrs. Murphy stood on her hind legs, her front paws wrapped around Harry’s neck. Harry rubbed her cheek against Mrs. Murphy’s soft fur.

“It’s a funny thing, Cooper. I didn’t think about myself. I thought about these two. If he had hurt Mrs. Murphy or Tucker, I would have killed him with my bare hands if I could have. My mind was perfectly composed and crystal-clear.”

“You’ve got guts, Harry. I was armed. You threw out your gun to sucker him in.”

“He wouldn’t have come in otherwise. I don’t know—maybe he would have. God, it seems like a dream. What a cunning son of a bitch. He had two guns.”

Cooper frisked the body. “And a stiletto.”

46

Mrs. Hogendobber rapturously returned on the day following Harry’s shoot-out with Josiah. The media had a field day with the heroic postmistress, her valiant cat and gallant dog, as well as stalwart Officer Cooper, so cool under fire. Harry found the hoopla almost as bad as being trapped in the tunnel.

Rick Shaw, fully briefed on the engagement with Josiah DeWitt, never mentioned in his prepared statement that Josiah’s entry into wealthy homes was on Mim Sanburne’s arm. Naturally, all of Crozet knew it, as well as Mim’s rich friends, but at least that detail wasn’t splashed across America. Jim secretly relished that his wife’s snobbery had been her undoing, and he was thrilled to be rid of Josiah.

Pewter envied her friends terribly and ate twice as much to make up for being denied stardom.

Fair and BoomBoom dated. No promises were made yet. They struggled to find some equilibrium amid the torrid gossip concerning them. Harry went from being the tough wife who threw out her husband to the innocent victim—in public, but not Harry’s, opinion.

Susan got Harry to take up golf for relaxation. Harry wasn’t certain that it relaxed her, but it began to obsess her.

Little Marilyn and Mim made up, sort of. Mim had brains enough to know that she would never dominate her daughter again.

On schedule, Rob brought the mail and picked it up. Harry kept reading postcards. Lindsay Astrove returned from Europe, sorry to have missed the drama. Jim Sanburne and the town council of Crozet decided to make money from the scandal. They offered tours of the tunnel. Tourists rode up in handcarts. A nice booklet on the life of Claudius Crozet was printed and sold for $12.50.

Life returned to normal, whatever that is.

Crozet was an imperfect corner of the world with rare moments of perfection. Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker witnessed one of them on a crisp September day.

Harry looked out the post office window and saw Stafford Sanburne, with his beautiful wife, step off the train. He was greeted by Mim and Little Marilyn. He had a big smile on his face. So did Harry.

Afterword

I hope you enjoyed my first crime novel. Tell my publishers if you did. Maybe they’ll give me an advance for another one.

Uh-oh, I hear footsteps in the hall.

“Sneaky Pie, what is this in my typewriter?”

Books by Rita Mae Brown with Sneaky Pie Brown

WISH YOU WERE HERE

REST IN PIECES

MURDER AT MONTICELLO

PAY DIRT

MURDER, SHE MEOWED

MURDER ON THE PROWL

CAT ON THE SCENT

SNEAKY PIE’S COOKBOOK FOR MYSTERY LOVERS

PAWING THROUGH THE PAST

CLAWS AND EFFECT

CATCH AS CAT CAN

THE TAIL OF THE TIP-OFF

WHISKER OF EVIL

Books by Rita Mae Brown

THE HAND THAT CRADLES THE ROCK

SONGS TO A HANDSOME WOMAN

THE PLAIN BROWN RAPPER

RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE

IN HER DAY

SIX OF ONE

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

SUDDEN DEATH

HIGH HEARTS

STARTING FROM SCRATCH:

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITERS’ MANUAL

BINGO

VENUS ENVY

DOLLEY: A NOVEL OF DOLLEY MADISON IN LOVE AND WAR

RIDING SHOTGUN

RITA WILL: MEMOIR OF A LITERARY RABBLE-ROUSER

LOOSE LIPS

OUTFOXED

HOTSPUR

FULL CRY

Don’t miss the new mystery from

RITA MAE BROWN

and

SNEAKY PIE BROWN

Whisker of Evil

Now available in hardcover

from Bantam Books

Please read on for a preview . . .

Whisker of Evil

on sale now

Barry Monteith was still breathing when Harry found him. His throat had been ripped out.

Tee Tucker, a corgi, racing ahead of Mary Minor Haristeen as well as the two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, found him first.

Barry was on his back, eyes open, gasping and gurgling, life ebbing with each spasm. He did not recognize Tucker nor Harry when they reached him.

“Barry, Barry.” Harry tried to comfort him, hoping he could hear her. “It will be all right,” she said, knowing perfectly well he was dying.

The tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, watched the blood jet upward.

“Jugular,” fat, gray Pewter succinctly commented.

Gently, Harry took the young man’s hand and prayed, “Dear Lord, receive into thy bosom the soul of Barry Monteith, a good man.” Tears welled in her eyes.

Barry jerked, then his suffering ended.

Death, often so shocking to city dwellers, was part of life here in the country. A hawk would swoop down to carry away the chick while the biddy screamed useless defiance. A bull would break his hip and need to be put down. And one day an old farmer would slowly walk to his tractor only to discover he couldn’t climb into the seat. The Angel of Death placed his hand on the stooping shoulder.

It appeared the Angel had offered little peaceful deliverance to Barry Monteith, thirty-four, fit, handsome with brown curly hair, and fun-loving. Barry had started his own business, breeding thoroughbreds, a year ago, with a business partner, Sugar Thierry.

“Sweet Jesus.” Harry wiped away the tears.

That Saturday morning, crisp, clear, and beautiful, had held the alluring promise of a perfect May 29. The promise had just curdled.

Harry had finished her early-morning chores and, despite a list of projects, decided to take a walk for an hour. She followed Potlicker Creek to see if the beavers had built any new dams. Barry was sprawled at the creek’s edge on a dirt road two miles from her farm that wound up over the mountains into adjoining Augusta County. It edged the vast land holdings of Tally Urquhart, who, well into her nineties and spry, loathed traffic. Three cars constituted traffic in her mind. The only time the road saw much use was during deer-hunting season in the fall.

“Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter, stay. I’m going to run to Tally’s and phone the sheriff.”

If Harry hit a steady lope, crossed the fields and one set of woods, she figured she could reach the phone in Tally’s stable within fifteen minutes, though the pitch and roll of the land including one steep ravine would cost time.

As she left her animals, they inspected Barry.

“What could rip his throat like that? A bear swipe?” Pewter’s pupils widened.

“Perhaps.” Mrs. Murphy, noncommittal, sniffed the gaping wound, as did Tucker.

The cat curled her upper lip to waft more scent into her nostrils. The dog, whose nose was much longer and nostrils larger, simply inhaled.

“I don’t smell bear,” Tucker declared. “That’s an overpowering scent, and on a morning like this it would stick.”

Pewter, who cherished luxury and beauty, found that Barry’s corpse disturbed her equilibrium. “Let’s be grateful we found him today and not three days from now.”

“Stop jabbering, Pewter, and look around, will you? Look for tracks.”

Grumbling, the gray cat daintily stepped down the dirt road. “You mean like car tracks?”

“Yes, or animal tracks,” Mrs. Murphy directed, then returned her attention to Tucker. “Even though coyote scent isn’t as strong as bear, we’d still smell a whiff. Bobcat? I don’t smell anything like that. Or dog. There are wild dogs and wild pigs back in the mountains. The humans don’t even realize they’re there.”

Tucker cocked her perfectly shaped head. “No dirt around the wound. No saliva, either.”

“I don’t see anything. Not even a birdie foot,” Pewter, irritated, called out from a hundred yards down the road.

“Well, go across the creek then and look over there.” Mrs. Murphy’s patience wore thin.

“And get my paws wet?” Pewter’s voice rose.

“It’s a ford. Hop from rock to rock. Go on, Pewt, stop being a chicken.”

Angrily, Pewter puffed up, tearing past them to launch herself over the ford. She almost made it, but a splash indicated she’d gotten her hind paws wet.

If circumstances had been different, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker would have laughed. Instead, they returned to Barry.

“I can’t identify the animal that tore him up.” The tiger shook her head.

“Well, the wound is jagged but clean. Like I said, no dirt.” Tucker studied the folds of flesh laid back.

“He was killed lying down,” the cat sagely noted. “If he was standing up, don’t you think blood would be everywhere?”

“Not necessarily,” the dog replied, thinking how strong heartbeats sent blood straight out from the jugular. Tucker was puzzled by the odd calmness of the scene.

“Pewter, have you found anything on that side?”

“Deer tracks. Big deer tracks.”

“Keep looking,” Mrs. Murphy requested.

“I hate it when you’re bossy.” Nonetheless, Pewter moved down the dirt road heading west.

“Barry was such a nice man.” Tucker mournfully looked at the square-jawed face, wide-open eyes staring at heaven.

Mrs. Murphy circled the body. “Tucker, I’m climbing up that sycamore. If I look down maybe I’ll see something.”

Her claws, razor sharp, dug into the thin surface of the tree, strips of darker outer bark peeling, exposing the whitish underbark. The odor of fresh water, of the tufted titmouse above her, all informed her. She scanned around for broken limbs, bent bushes, anything indicating Barry—or other humans or large animals—had traveled to this spot avoiding the dirt road.

“Pewter?”

“Big fat nothing.” The gray kitty noted that her hind paws were wet. She was getting little clods of dirt stuck between her toes. This bothered her more than Barry did. After all, he was dead. Nothing she could do for him. But the hardening brown earth between her toes, that was discomfiting.

“Well, come on back. We’ll wait for Mom.” Mrs. Murphy dropped her hind legs over the limb where she was sitting. Her hind paws reached for the trunk, the claws dug in, and she released her grip, swinging her front paws to the trunk. She backed down.

Tucker touched noses with Pewter, who had recrossed the creek more successfully this time.

Mrs. Murphy came up and sat beside them.

“Hope his face doesn’t change colors while we’re waiting for the humans. I hate that. They get all mottled.” Pewter wrinkled her nose.

“I wouldn’t worry.” Tucker sighed.

In the distance they heard sirens.

“Bet they won’t know what to make of this, either,” Tucker said.

“It’s peculiar.” Mrs. Murphy turned her head in the direction of the sirens.

“Weird and creepy.” Pewter pronounced judgment as she picked at her hind toes, and she was right.

Welcome to the charming world of

MRS. MURPHY

Don’t miss these earlier mysteries . . .

THE TAIL OF THE TIP-OFF

When winter hits Crozet, Virginia, it hits hard. That’s nothing new to postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and her friends, who keep warm with hard work, hot toddies, and rabid rooting for the University of Virginia’s women’s basketball team. But post-game high spirits are laid low when contractor H.H. Donaldson drops dead in the parking lot. And soon word spreads that it wasn’t a heart attack that did him in. It just doesn’t sit right with Harry that one of her fellow fans is a murderer. And as tiger cat Mrs. Murphy knows, things that don’t sit right with Harry lead her to poke her not-very-sensitive human nose into dangerous places. To make sure their intrepid mom lands on her feet, the feisty feline and her furry cohorts Pewter and corgi Tee Tucker are about to have their paws full helping Harry uncover a killer with no sense of fair play. . . .

“You don’t have to be a cat lover to enjoy Brown’s 11th Mrs. Murphy novel. . . . Brown writes so compellingly . . . [she] breathes believability into every aspect of this smart and sassy novel.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

CATCH AS CAT CAN

Spring fever comes to the small town of Crozet, Virginia. As the annual Dogwood Festival approaches, postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen feels her own mating instincts stir. As for tiger cat Mrs. Murphy, feline intuition tells her there’s more in the air than just pheromones. It begins with a case of stolen hubcaps and proceeds to the mysterious death of a dissolute young mechanic over a sobering cup of coffee. Then another death and a shooting lead to the discovery of a half-million crisp, clean dollar bills that look to be very dirty. Now Harry is on the trail of a cold-blooded murderer. Mrs. Murphy already knows who it is—and who’s next in line. She also knows that Harry, curious as a cat, does not have nine lives. And the one she does have is hanging by the thinnest of threads.

“The[se] mysteries continue to be a true treat.”

—The Post Courier (Charleston, SC)

CLAWS AND EFFECT

Winter puts tiny Crozet, Virginia, in a deep freeze and everyone seems to be suffering from the winter blahs, including postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen. So all are ripe for the juicy gossip coming out of Crozet Hospital—until the main source of that gossip turns up dead. It’s not like Harry to resist a mystery, and she soon finds the hospital a hotbed of ego, jealousy, and illicit love. But it’s tiger cat Mrs. Murphy, roaming the netherworld of Crozet Hospital, who sniffs out a secret that dates back to the Underground Railroad. Then Harry is attacked and a doctor is executed in cold blood. Soon only a quick-witted cat and her animal pals feline Pewter and corgi Tee Tucker stand between Harry and a coldly calculating killer with a prescription for murder.

“Reading a Mrs. Murphy mystery is like eating a potato chip. You always go back for more. . . . Whimsical and enchanting . . . the latest expert tale from a deserving bestselling series.”

—The Midwest Book Review

PAWING THROUGH THE PAST

“You’ll never get old.” Each member of the class of 1980 has received the letter. Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, who is on the organizing committee for Crozet High’s twentieth reunion, decides to take it as a compliment. Others think it’s a joke. But Mrs. Murphy senses trouble. And the sly tiger cat is soon proven right . . . when the class womanizer turns up dead with a bullet between his eyes. Then another note followed by another murder makes it clear that someone has waited twenty years to take revenge. While Harry tries to piece together the puzzle, it’s up to Mrs. Murphy and her animal pals to sniff out the truth. And there isn’t much time. Mrs. Murphy is the first to realize that Harry has been chosen Most Likely to Die, and if she doesn’t hurry, Crozet High’s twentieth reunion could be Harry’s last.

“This is a cat-lover’s dream of a mystery. . . . ‘Harry’ is simply irresistible. . . . [Rita Mae] Brown once again proves herself ‘Queen of Cat Crimes.’. . . Don’t miss out on this lively series, for it’s one of the best around.”

—Old Book Barn Gazette

CAT ON THE SCENT

Things have been pretty exciting lately in Crozet, Virginia—a little too exciting if you ask resident feline investigator Mrs. Murphy. Just as the town starts to buzz over its Civil War reenactment, a popular local man disappears. No one’s seen Tommy Van Allen’s single-engine plane, either—except for Mrs. Murphy, who spotted it during a foggy evening’s mousing. Even Mrs. Murphy’s favorite human, postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, can sense that something is amiss. But things really take an ugly turn when the town reenacts the battle of Oak Ridge—and a participant ends up with three very real bullets in his back. While the clever tiger cat and her friends sift through clues that just don’t fit together, more than a few locals fear that the scandal will force well-hidden town secrets into the harsh light of day. And when Mrs. Murphy’s relentless tracking places loved ones in danger, it takes more than a canny kitty and her team of animal sleuths to set things right again. . . .

“Told with spunk and plenty of whimsy, this is another delightful entry in a very popular series.”

—Publishers Weekly

MURDER ON THE PROWL

When a phony obituary appears in the local paper, the good people of Crozet, Virginia, are understandably upset. Who would stoop to such a tasteless act? Is it a sick joke—or a sinister warning? Only Mrs. Murphy, the canny tiger cat, senses true malice at work. And her instincts prove correct when a second fake obit appears, followed by a fiendish murder . . . and then another. People are dropping like flies in Crozet, and no one knows why. Yet even if Mrs. Murphy untangles the knot of passion and deceit that has sent someone into a killing frenzy, it won’t be enough. Somehow the shrewd puss must guide her favorite human, postmistress “Harry” Haristeen, down a perilous trail to a deadly killer . . . and a killer of a climax. Or the next obit may be Harry’s own.

“Leave it to a cat to grasp the essence of the cozy mystery: murder among friends.” —The New York Times Book Review

MURDER, SHE MEOWED

The annual steeplechase races are the high point in the social calendar of the horse-mad Virginians of cozy Crozet. But when one of the jockeys is found murdered in the main barn, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen finds herself in a desperate race of her own—to trap the killer. Luckily for her, she has an experienced ally: her sage tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy. Utilizing her feline genius to plumb the depths of human depravity, Mrs. Murphy finds herself on a trail that leads to the shocking truth behind the murder. But will her human companion catch on in time to beat the killer to the gruesome finish line?

“The intriguing characters in this much-loved series continue to entertain.”

—The Nashville Banner

PAY DIRT

The residents of tiny Crozet, Virginia, thrive on gossip, especially in the post office, where Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen presides with her tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy. So when a belligerent Hell’s Angel crashes Crozet, demanding to see his girlfriend, the leather-clad interloper quickly becomes the chief topic of conversation. Then the biker is found murdered, and everyone is baffled. Well, almost everyone . . . Mrs. Murphy and her friends Welsh corgi Tee Tucker and overweight feline Pewter haven’t been slinking through alleys for nothing. But can they dig up the truth in time to save their human from a ruthless killer?

“If you must work with a collaborator, you want it to be someone with intelligence, wit, and an infinite capacity for subtlety—someone, in fact, very much like a cat. . . . It’s always a pleasure to visit this cozy world. . . . There’s no resisting Harry’s droll sense of humor . . . or Mrs. Murphy’s tart commentary.”

—The New York Times Book Review

MURDER AT MONTICELLO

The most popular citizen of Virginia has been dead for nearly 170 years. That hasn’t stopped the good people of tiny Crozet, Virginia, from taking pride in every aspect of Thomas Jefferson’s life. But when an archaeological dig of the slave quarters at Jefferson’s home, Monticello, uncovers a shocking secret, emotions in Crozet run high—dangerously high. The stunning discovery at Monticello hints at hidden passions and age-old scandals. As postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and some of Crozet’s Very Best People try to learn the identity of a centuries-old skeleton—and the reason behind the murder—Harry’s tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, and her canine and feline friends attempt to sniff out a modern-day killer. Mrs. Murphy and corgi Tee Tucker will stick their paws into the darker mysteries of human nature to solve murders old and new—before curiosity can kill the cat . . . and Harry Haristeen.

“You don’t have to be a cat lover to love Murder at Monticello.”

—The Indianapolis Star

REST IN PIECES

Small towns don’t take kindly to strangers—unless the stranger happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous and seemingly unattached male. When Blair Bainbridge comes to Crozet, Virginia, the local matchmakers lose no time in declaring him perfect for their newly divorced postmistress, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen. Even Harry’s tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy, and her Welsh corgi, Tee Tucker, believe he smells A-okay. Could his one little imperfection be that he’s a killer? Blair becomes the most likely suspect when the pieces of a dismembered corpse begin turning up around Crozet. No one knows who the dead man is, but when a grisly clue makes a spectacular appearance in the middle of the fall festivities, more than an early winter snow begins chilling the blood of Crozet’s Very Best People. That’s when Mrs. Murphy, her friend Tucker, and her human companion Harry begin to sort through the clues . . . only to find themselves a whisker away from becoming the killer’s next victims.

“Skillfully plotted, properly gruesome . . . and wise as well as wickedly funny.”

—Booklist

And don’t miss the very first

MRS. MURPHY

mystery . . .

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Small towns are like families. Everyone lives very close together . . . and everyone keeps secrets. Crozet, Virginia, is a typical small town—until its secrets explode into murder. Crozet’s thirty-something postmistress, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, has a tiger cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a Welsh corgi (Tee Tucker), a pending divorce, and a bad habit of reading postcards not addressed to her. When Crozet’s citizens start turning up murdered, Harry remembers that each received a card with a tombstone on the front and the message “wish you were here” on the back. Intent on protecting their human friends, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker begin to scent out clues. Meanwhile, Harry is conducting her own investigation, unaware that her pets are one step ahead of her. If only Mrs. Murphy could alert her somehow, Harry could uncover the culprit before another murder occurs—and before Harry finds herself on the killer’s mailing list.

“Charming . . . Ms. Brown writes with wise, disarming wit.”

—The New York Times Book Review